HELP my system is gong to hell in a hand basket!!!!!!!!!

Ok lets start by telling you what I got: Emachines tower but the old mother went out so I got a new, with a pentium 3 chip, only 256 ram (low I know but working on upgrading) two hard drives 80GB and a 120GB currently using the 120GB for system operation, running windows xp professional service pack 2 program aquired from a friend also no longer have restore disc. My problem is that I run anti-spyware, adware, virus programs some say they find things some say they dont. I go through the steps to remove there findings but 1. they still find the same ones/things. 2. some of the programs that i run they say that the other programs are bad/problems i dont know who to trust any more. the programs that i run/use are: avg, macafee, advanced windows care, cccleaner, windows defender, there is probally more but i cant think of any right now. My system is sluggish, freezes, tried to do the system restore option but it does not work it say it could not be completed fatal error. currently having to run in safe mode to do anything. CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME OR POINT ME IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. COMPLETELY FRUSTRATED AND STUMPED. HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!HELP!!!
Thanks a bunch,
-Spike

 

1 not enough ram
2 not enough ram
3 not enough ram
4 too many antivirus programs get rid of mcafee and defender
5 too many tweaker programs stay with ccleaner if you must have one
6 Check your startup programs in msconfig and switch off what isn't necessary to start with windows.

Oh and welcome to Major Geeks

 

First and foremost: DUMP MACAFEE!!! It is an infamous resource hog. I've seen PC's with 3 times the power you have get brought to their knees with Macafee installed. Double your RAM as soon as possible. Another 256mb shouldn't cost more than $20-$30 these days... Be sure to perform regular maintenance on your PC. Here's a good read: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=106650
Read it, know it, live it.
A visit to the malware removal forum may be a good idea too. Read the "READ ME FIRST" sticky.
And do everything studiot mentioned in his above post. I know I repeated some of it, but it needed repeating!!!

hd2k