Windows Installer...grrr

Ok, here's the sweet simple issue. I work in a school district, One one of my "Student" servers, it's been giving me nothing but headaches...It locks up, it allows Mozilla to work, but when I open Internet Explorer, it takes about 10 minutes to get Google up. I've run "Ad-Aware, SpySweeper, AVIRA, SpyBot, Norton, ect, ect, ect, it's cleaned out all my virus' and spyware, (I got this job about 3 months ago, found it a complete reck!)

Now my issue is,

Internet Explorer still doenst' work
Window Installer Version 3.0 gives me an error "Install Server Not Responding" and when I click cancel it gives me error "Failed to Patch" but no error code.

I run Galileo to update my antivirus programs on the network, but evertime I try to Install the latest definitions, I get my Windows Installer Error!Grrrrr!

BTW, I'm running Windows Server 2000!


Help!

Sounds like the OS is damaged from years of misuse and bad administration.

First stop, a good registry repair/cleaner. Take a look on downloads.com for one of the free ones there.

Next, clear out any unused apps from add/remove programs.

Finally, run a disk clean/repair utility.

Once you do all that, go ahead and see if there are improvements though typically when a box is in this bad of shape, it's really best to break out the install CDs and start over.

PS
I highly doubt what you're seeing is malware behavior but it is very possible that malware since removed could have caused the damage to begin with.

--TH13

Ok, ran registry cleaner, still getting same errors...pulled up the event log, and getting this error everytime I try to update my student's antivirus definitions