Vista and Windows Explorer problems

Dell PC running Vista Home Premium and it's chock full of malware and obvious rogue-ware. I'm going to start cleaning it up, but every 10 or 20 seconds the Windows Explorer crashes with this message: "Windows Explorer has stopped working..." with a scrolling green bar. After 5 or 10 seconds it says "Windows Explorer is now restarting...." also with the scrolling green bar. It continues in this 'loop' over and over and over making any use of the PC close to impossible. A look at the task manager and msconfig startup show lots of malware but it's almost impossible to run anything with the explorer crashing every 20 seconds. I'm not the most experienced Vista user (yet); is it normal to have an entry (or 3) in the msconfig startup for "Microsoft Windows Operating System"? There's 3 seperate entries; one has 'rundll.exe oobefldr.dll ShowWelcomeCenter'. One has 'C:\windows\ehome\ehtray.exe' and the third one is 'C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\WMPNSCFG.exe' and I was wondering if this was normal. The explorer problem happens in safe mode also. I don't need any help with malware removal (not yet anyway) but I do need some ideas on how to repair Windows explorer so it won't stop working every 20 seconds so I can install some programs. Any ideas, suggestions, or help will be GREATLY appreciated! Thanx!!!

hd2k