Win XP Pro SP3 System Problems

Hi all
First time here. I need help, I have been fighting with my XP Pro SP 3 for a week+
here is what happened,
I have a HP that I bought new 8-9 years ago. I have been keeping it running, its been upgraded and had to put in a new processor(5 years ago) and hard drive(5 years ago and also a few months ago)When I bought the pc it had Media Center 2005 on it with the good ole HP restore partition only no discs. When I lost the hard drive of course the partition too I had no way to restore it. I did have a backup but at that time I only did backups no images. I tried to get HP to help and all they wanted to do was sell me a hard drive. I used my backups. I was able to get it working and kept it that way until now. I now image the drive and when I replaced the hard drive to increase the size I used the image to restore it and all was good. I have had a few times where I got hit with virus attacks and always seemed to get by. The other week the system went to hell real quick. I use to run AVG paid for years and got tired of paying to have my cpu maxed all the time with their product. It was not until one of the updates and it slowed to a crawl and they had no fix. I went with MSE about a year ago and used MB scanner. I faithfully scanned and thought I was safe.
When My system started falling apart last week I ran scans and nothing was reported so I tried Avast, Dr Web Kapersky and others and found a boat load of bugs. I did my best to clean them but it still seemed infected. I went to GeekPolice and they helped me and gave me a clean thumbs up. They worked with me for days and I thought all was good.
After it was clean it seemed ok except I was not able to start the firewall, AV (MSE) would not start, Update would not work IE was bad and several other things.
I had a good image but like a fool I re imaged after the system was clean but before I knew if all would be ok. So now I had an image of a clean system but hurting. I have so much software on this system and some of the bigger dollar ones I cant re install like my Quickbooks Pro (no longer supported by Intuit) and several of my audio studios (Sony bought them out) and no longer support them and my video convertors and editors so much of this stuff I cant re install. My Office Pro 2007 was a barter from a friend who was a Microsoft tech and he had VLK he used and I did a job for him and he paid me by giving my the Office Suite with a then legal key. When he quit I later found out the key was no good so I could not re install. Not my fault and nothing I did wrong.
I am sitting here now with my XP that I cant re install because I cant lose the software. Most of the software wont run under the new windows anyway and much of my hardware will not either so I have to fix this.

Here is what has been done......Loaded with virus and worms cleaned and after that cant get firewall to start, AV (MSE) would not run but I can get Avast or other to run but windows reports it that there is no AV. IE8 wont install nor would MSE. I tried to update the computer but without IE it wont although IE6 seems to be there even after several tries to install IE8. Security center would not open, system would not open(no device manager) in control panel and system restore would not work either.

I then decided to do a repair install but I do not have any Media Center discs. Knowing MC is XP Pro I have a legal Pro disc I bought from Best Buy SP2 years ago and decided I would try it. I did a repair install and it worked. It came up asking for a key which I entered the key on the package and it would not work. I called Microsoft and they said if I had a key it would work and they said I could buy one for $100 I flipped first I have a bought Pro and now they want me to pay $100 for an OS they are no longer going to be putting out updates for when I have a bought disc. They would not budge but they were kind to tell me my Pro key was a good key I just could not use it.

So I got mad and looked for help had a friend send me a bunch of programs to register but none worked. Got a copy of oembios and ran it and it set my key(XP Pro) so it would register and it did. It now comes up as XP Pro not Media Center so I guess that is ok. After this install nothing changed as far as the issues. the weird thing is if I wait 5-10 minutes the firewall will start, the AV will show as on, the system restore will access but it did not work, the device manager would come alive and the update icon would pop up in the sys tray. This happens every time.

I started checking and found that the issue has to be with WMI, ICS, Net Man and winmgmt. I went to services to look and each time I run services I get a runtime error and then I click no to debug and then services is there but I cant change anything it just hangs if I try.

I was told to shut off system restore and when I did that I could now get to device manager right away and other tasks seemed to work like normal.

I had help from a friend and we did a bit of trial and errors and so far it does not seem we made anything worse actually a little better. I tried Windows Repair, Several microsoft fixits (download from another pc) and they do not work. I tried several fixes as posted on forums from others that had very similar issues but nothing has helped yet.

Is there any way you guys could help? I really do not want to format because I just bought a new Win 8 machine but that does not get my thousands of dollars worth of software back that I will lose if I have to start fresh. I understand re installing new would fix it but that is not an option and I hope when of you guys could have a better answer. All I ask is for a try. if it does not work ok but I want to try.

Can you help?

Sorry for the novel but you have the whole story in case you need it.

Thanks

 

Not sure what you mean by that; if you have valid serial numbers, you should be able to install and run your software on Windows 8 (maybe in compatibility mode, but they should run).

Note that some software needs to be deactivated before you can install and run it on a new machine.

 

What I was getting at I know XP is old and I expected some to say just get a new system. Most of my software on XP will not run on Win 8 so I have to get the XP going that is what I meant. It may be easier to forget XP but that would be too costly for me.
When I checked most of my audio studios and photoshop and my scanner will not run and although I am not familiar with 8 at all I read it does not have compatibility mode. I read that was ended after 7
Also there is a thing called no longer being supported, meaning my Quickbooks Pro ($500) ended support for my 2008 version reinstalls years ago. Why should I buy it again when it runs fine because Intuit wants to be greedy and tries to force me to buy the newest version? The same with my audio studios that were bought out by Sony and after 30 days they ended support for them. This was several years ago, again why should I be forced to rebuy newer versions just to line the pockets of wealthy software companies when my software runs fine as long as I can keep Win XP going.
From what I read Office Pro 2007 will not run on 8 either so should I just spend another $400 because I decided to give up on XP?
As you can see its not easy nor cheap for me to drop XP. I know I may be forced to but that will be when I exhaust every chance at fixing it.
Can you offer any real help with my XP problem?

 

Where did you get the information from that
a) Windows 8 does not have Compatibility Mode?
b) Office 2007 does not run on Windows 8?

Anyway, if you still have all the installers and serial numbers for your installed programs on XP, I would go for a clean install of XP, then reinstall all software that you still want to run on XP.

 

Was reading on forums about WIn 8 although I have a new Win 8 system I have not had a chance to work with it yet.
Mainly HP told me what I mentioned on my post when I spoke to them about my XP system and software their pre sales tech said many of my programs will not run under Win 8 and he told me the compat mode ended in Win 7
You have to know I have not used anything but XP for the last 10+ years so I know nothing about any of the other OS's.
I did get fed up and I re installed my XP Pro (full) and I have justified all the work as a need to clean up and get rid of a ton of unneeded files.
I will deal with many of my programs inability to re install due to the companies no longer supporting the versions I have due to greed. What I mean here is their unwillingness to supply me a new key now that I have to redo everything.
Yes, I pay for 99% of my software.

 

cybor462...

If you are willing to think completely outside the box, I recommend installing a couple of optimizers. MajorGeeks recommends JetBoost, and Process Lasso should be a requirement on MS systems.

I just say try this to improve performance and see if some of the problems rise to the surface and can be easily identified and fixed. This is what I have done on this xp machine, and it has totally changed the way it performs. I don't have freezes, crashes, etc. any more. I know your system was fine before the problems, so this is just a suggestion. It does work...

Sounds to me like your OS is on its way out of the mess with all you have done so far. Hope it all works out for you

P.S.-If you try the programs and would like to know, I'll pass on the settings I use. I don't like to turn off Windows systems, so the settings I have for JetBoost are very simple. Process Lasso doesn't shut down anything. It forces the MS run-time to optimize faster and with more information (better)...