Weird stuff!! Windows XP half freezes???

Couldn't really think of a suitable name for this but the subject actually explains it fairly well. He goes a detailed description.

A friend of mines computer was unable to get on the internet so I offered to help him out. We'll firsts things first, I check to see if his virus software was up to date so i could do some scans. It wasnt even running! So I tried to load it up and do a scan, didn't happen. I would click the icon and it wouldn't do anything. just sat there. So i unistalled it and PLANED to re-installed it. I restart the computer after the unistall and slap the disc in. Nothing happens (using NAV usually autoloads) so I try to start the setup manually. Yet again when I start the setup file nothing happens (computer thinks then does nothing). So I run a bootable virus scanner from DOS. We'll it finds several viruses (which i wish I would have written down). I delete them and boot the computer up. Again I try to install NAV and still it does nothing when I try. So I click internet explorer and nothing happens. Give her the ol' restart to see if that fixes that (hoping, didn't think it actually would) and right when XP boots i click internet explorer, It works! So i proceed in going to windows update since im on the net (at least now im on the net, so i fixed one problem). Windows update will not update, it gives me error code 0x80248011. So I research the error code and dont come up with much except some stuff about spyware. Now it gets weird I minimize the error code window and go to open internet explorer, nothing happens, i click firefox, nothing happens, I go through every program on the computer and the only things that open are my computer and any other file browsers. So I grab a copy of hijack this through a my computer window and run it. Found a couple of things i knew were not supposed to be there and deleted them, rebooted and still same problem. So theres my predicament (sp). If i click on something within a few seconds of the windows startup it will work. After 10 seconds only the file browsers like my computer and my pictures will open and I can access the internet through them (thats how i got here). NOTHING else will open. Its like "XP freezes half way". Since I read the hijack this terms im not going to post the log file just yet. I'll wait until you guys ask.

That is one hellava post, sorry about that guys. Please help me out though.