Can anyone explain what happened?

Running XP on a Dell deminsions 4400 with 18gb harddrive and 768 mg RAM [manual says it can only handle 1gb].

Anyway, I downloaded Avant browser for use as a back-up, took it for a spin. Everything went well, I shut it down and went back to IE8.

About an hour later I was in Yahoo games and got booted out. I tried getting back in but Java wouldn't work. Thinking maybe there was a conflict with Avant and IE8 I removed Avant. Then my Avast stopped working and when I clicked on it, the hourglass fluttered for a second then went out.

I shut down and rebooted hoping it was all just a glitch. All I got was my background screen with no icons, no Start menu, nothing.

Fearing a virus from the Avant download, I booted in safe mode and ran Malwarebytes, it found nothing.

I tried a System Restore and that wouldn't work so I did that in Safe Mode, too and it took.

Everything seems to be back to normal but when I checked my Event Viewer I got all kind of strange happenings with multiple occurances for each.
Error: Printer Microsoft XPS Writer failed to initialize, no suitable driver could be found.
Error: Java Qiuck Started Service terminated with service-specific error 1 [0x1].
Error:The Computer Browser Service cannot be started because it depends on the Work Station Service which failed to start.
I'm getting these errors after the System Restore and assume they were happening prior to Restore.

If the Printer Microsoft XPS Writer error has to do with actual printing, I dont have a printer hooked up and didn't try to print anything.
Can anyone guess as to what happened ?
Thanx in advance for any input.