Task manager problem!! Can't install virus scanner!!

Hi all,
My one friend is having a problem with her computer. She's running XP Pro. She first came to me saying she had spyware. I ran spybot and adaware, with updated defs for each. Cleared ~200 pieces of spyware. A problem still though. In normal mode, when I press Crtl-Alt-Delete, the task manager will come up for 1 second, and then will go away (works fine in safe mode). So, I thought it was a virus. I tried to install AVG, and I get a 16-bit system error. I try to install Norton, and get a blue screen saying "bad pool caller." I ran trend micro's housecall online scanner, and remove 35 viruses. Still, task manager will go away on its own and I can't install a virus scanner. Any thoughts??

 

go to a machine with norton installed on it and create and emergency virus scan disk. it will probly take about 4 floppies and boot the computer with the problem using those disks. they will do a memory resident scan, boot sector scan and a full scan of the hard drive and clean any virus it finds. try that and post your results and we will go from there.

 

or u can go to centralcommand.com and download vexira's boot disk that only takes up one floppy and its free. its what we use when AVG won't install on a machine. works pretty damn good too