insufficient system resourses? Help please

I have a friend whose computor is doing some crazy stuff.
Cant launch explorer or firefox,cant launch any system tools etc..
No programs that open will operate or finish scanning

Click on disk cleaner or anything in windows startup...get a message box

c:/programfiles internetexplorer insufficient system resourses exist to complete the reqeusted service.

This popping up when trying to launch browsers,start menue objects, any of the programs used to scan computor and the virus protection or they launch but will not scan.

Any help guys would be appreciated... Winxp sp2

Looks like a virus but I'm no tech....and assuming sinc nothing works, nothing can be downloaded either.

 

While i do agree that is highly likely...... the first thing that came to my mind was that his RAM is failing or not seated properly?

 

Do they run in safe mode?

 

They are running now but not very good...very slow...

Still doing some scans for malware and those nasty things...

It really acted like it had a virus but avg scan didn't find one...virus or trogan.

I have a question myself about the advanced systemcare program and the optimization feature. Can I ask it here or do I need to post somewhere else?