Is this a faulty WXP installation? Virus?

Hi everybody, I'm new to this forums

I friend of mine told me his laptop was behaving strangely so I offered to give it a look.
It's a HP Compaq nx6310 with WXP Pro SP2 installed.

The sypmtoms are:
Very long times to startup/close Windows
Desktop looks a bit oversized, like the screen is not well adjusted on the sides
The soundcard doesnt work although the drivers were correctly installed.
Clicking on My Computer-> Properties does nothing
Trying to uninstall some hardware like the soundcard freezes the OS , had to kill the process
WIFI and LAN icons don't appear besides the windows clock, network connections folder is empty
Can't cut and paste files.
When you open a folder its icon doesn't show in the task bar


I tried repairing the installation, (It seemed that it took a bit too long than a normal WIndows Install).
The OS behaved correctly the first time you use it after repairing and NOD32 and spybot find nothing, but on next restart the problems are back again.

I admit I'm overwhelmed by this and I'd really like to fix it without a format and clean installation because of the programs and files we would need to backup.

 

You'll probably end up spending a longer time sweating over this than you would backing up and reinstalling.

 

Pixelot is right, just back up and reinstall.

 

I ran another cleaner and found nothing so I'll follow your advice