Problems After Installing Sp2

To start off, I formatted my hard drive the weekend of Thanksgiving because I had a virus that I could not get rid of.

My computer is a : HP Media Center PC M470N computer.
System Information: MS Windows XP, Media Center Edition, Version 2002, Service Pack 2. Hewlett-Packard Pavilion, Intel (R), Pentium(R)4 CPU 3.00 GHz 3.00 GHx, 512 MG of RAM.

When I reformatted and installed using my Restore Disks, I followed the recomendations from HP concerning the updates that needed to be installed on my computer before I installed SP2, which I did but it took me a while mainly becuase I was having trouble with my internet connection, which is satellite and is very slow so I have been working with a satellite forum trying to get that figured out. That, by the way, is still not working correctly. Anyway, last night I was online and got some dowloads from windows, which was finally SP2. I let it download and installed it. Today when I started my computer there is no screen for the password, which I thought was supposed to be there after installing SP2. Did not pay too much attention to that. I worked all day (I work for myself typing medical transcription). Anyway, I worked all day and when I went to leave for my deliveries, when I went to shut down my computer, there were 24 more downloads to install when I shut the computer down. I allowed that to take place while I was out of the office. MY computer was off when I came back home so I assumed that all the downloads were installed. Now this evening, when I turned on my computer, again the password screen did not show up, the computer is running very sluggishly, freezes up, etc. When I hit START and try to open CONTROL PANEL, MY DOCUMENTS, ETC ON THE START MENU, I get a sound like it is being blocked but I am not sure by what. I have to use the Right Click and use the Explore function in order to open these items. Almost anything that I select gives me that response. I went to the System Restore and there are no restore points for today or yesterday, and all the restore points that I had before are all gone. To make a long story short, I am not sure what to do with this mess. How can I find out if SP2 installed correctly and why can I not open MY DOCUMENTS, CONTROL PANEL, ETC with just clicking on it like I use to be able to. I think trying to do this correctly and taking my time has really made the reformat a waste of time.

If anyone can help me resolve this issue, I would greatly appreciate it.

 

Okay, are you saying that I should start all over again? If so, how do I get SP2 to install it in safe mode? I have some external hard drives that I can back my system up on, which is the reason I bought them in the first place. My main idea when I bought them was to reformat and reinstall all my software and get updates, and then create a backup (Or image) of it after all updates were done that I could use to go back to that point if for some reason I had to reformat again. I did not know if that was possible, but I was going to give it a shot. It has taken me so long to get all this done, and none of it is working properly, that that idea has been shot down.

If you think we can fix this, where do I start?