Laptop Help . . . Please

[Nakor]

Please help have posted this elsewhere but getting desperate.

Running a Dell Laptop with XP about a year old.
All I use this machine for is online poker and general surfing, I do not use it for downloading or viewing anything and the only websites I use are the BBC, blonde and Battrick and the like.

I use AVG and it is updated regularly.

Yesterday on its update AVG asked me to shut down machine for update to take effect.  This has not happened before and as I was playing poker I had to delay my shutdown.  Internet explorer then started playing up, when I opened Blonde I would get a poker advert open in another IE window, if I open Battrick another advert and so on.

Downloaded Spybot and it found some files and destroyed them.  Then a system crash.  Restart ran an avg check and spybot again, and again rogue files found on both programs.  All seemed OK last night and went back to playing poker, after a couple of hours IE crashed, stars, dtd and laddies lobbies all crashed and I could just finish the tables I was on, all icons had gone from view on desktop, restarted laptop it fired up, ran avg and same files found as previous check.

This morning IE still playing up, Tab 2 keeps crashing in IE, adverts opening in new windows etc.  AVG and Spybot still finding rogue files and programs, IE keeps crashing and lobbies cannot be accessed after about an hour's play and then the whole OS freezes, certain keys on the keyboard also come and go it seems.  There seems to be no pattern to these faults as regards to time.

So questions - any ideas as to the fault and where I may have picked it up?

Can I factory reset the Laptop?  If so how?

Is there anything I should be doing differently? (except Firefox and Avast)

Any advice or help appreciated greatly.

[Snatiramas]

Hi Nakor.....I also use AVG on an old XP and for a whil it went flaky...........calmed down when I used adaware. As regards system reset you probably have a CD that will allow you to reset.....please make sure you save any of your own docs before you do this..........not much help but that's me all over

[AndrewT]

Have a look at the names of the things AVG and Spybot finds and stick them into Google. There may advice on how to solve the problem.

[RichEO]

Try windows defender.

Yes, use avast rather than AVG.

Recovery disk with laptop, it's worth a format and re-install if you don't have anything on there you can't lose or backup.

[Nakor]

Have tried the google approach but little on offer, but it does seem that AVG i not liking spybot.
I also seemed to have approved something I shouldn't in Spybot.

Windows defender says I am running fine.

Find my disk and start again I guess.

Thanks for the help.

[ifm]

turn off system restore and run an online scanner

[Nakor]

Thanks Ian has worked nicely.

Owe you a beer or two.

[Bongo]

What did it find?