XP cpu hanging process befuddlement

Hello,
Approx 6 weeks ago my father complained that his browser was not working and the machine was "very slow". On booting, I saw that the Supportsoft processes (either sprtsvc.exe or sprtcmd.exe) were pegged at 98% of cpu. IE8 would peg at approx 85% cpu when attempting to access any website. It would open fine to a blank page, but would hang on "website found, waiting for xxx". Firefox and Opera just immediately peg at 99% of cpu and never even open a frame. Google chrome works fine.

I have tried IE in no addons mode, have removed and re-installed firefox and opera to no avail. I have run multiple scans, booted in clean mode, removed all AV software and disabled the windows firewall. The problem persists.

I originally posted this thread in the malware removal forum. I went through the recommended process, the logs were reviewed, etc and the conclusion was that this was not a malware issue. They recommended I come here and resubmit.

I am stumped.

The system is Dell Dimension 8300 XP Professional SP3. One other (perhaps unrelated) symptom is that system restore does not work. For any date selected it excutes and exits eventually with the helpful message "Unable to restore your system, please choose another date" or something similar.

Am I missing something incredibly basic? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Anything else I can do to provide info just let me know.

TIA

 

Since these are using CPUs with little benefit, you might want to consider removing them.
http://www.ehow.com/how_5166416_remove-sprtsvc-exe.html

This is for the 2nd entry

 

Thanks for your response. My concern is not so much with how to get rid of sprtsvc/sprtcmd, but what is causing them to go into this mode in the first place. It becomes an issue when IE8, Firefox, Opera, Java update all hang at 90+% cpu. They are unusable.

 

These are programs from Dell; possibly trying to get to a Dell server to check if the computer needs any updates.

On the Dells I work on, I disable/remove these types of programs. If something isn't working, then I go to the Dell site, put in the model and see if there are newer drivers for the specific problem. It is a rare occurrence when something needs updating, that's why I consider such programs a waste of computer resources.

Also I have removed Java from all our computers except one. I have not found any program that complains because I do not have Java. (Note: Sun/Oracle Java is not javascript)

 

Thanks for your response, plodr. These Dell things are unimportant; I just included them to demonstrate that it does not appear to be an issue just with IE8. IE8 hangs, Firefox hangs, Opera hangs, jre-7u1-windows-i586.exe hangs. The common characteristic seems to be each is attempting to access a remote site. All max out the cpu and get stuck there. I installed winzip and stupidly checked the "send usage feedback" checkbox and THAT did the same thing.

Google chrome works. Any suggestions on how to isolate the problem would be greatly appreciated.

Thx