questions before system recovery

Hello, I'll try to keep this short!
I got good help in here before and don't know where else to post.
A few weeks ago I thought I was doing the right thing and went through some steps to clear my PC of browser trojans, search for viruses, and whatever else?
I wish i never bothered, I was told to download "Hijack this", "spybot sd", and i removed my preinstalled mcafee virusscan demo wich was past due and nonupdateable without paying, In place of that I downloaded "Panda scan Titanium's free trial" from download.com.
after running all these and clearing the browser trojans and spyware and running virusscans, I noticed in "start\connect to\show all connection", where I have icons for my I.S.P.'s there use to be a firewall I could enable in the properties\advanced tab, but now it says the WMI could be corrupt, and i should do a system restore to an earlier date.
Well I already tried various restore dates, and the process just hangs and does'nt even initiate,
I then looked towards windows update,
I have gotten all the important stuff prior to Sep.2003, and I just downloaded everything that came up anyway, or at least tried!
I had to do every "fix" they give for certain download/install issues for windows updates, and the files never did install even after letting it sit for more than 2 hours,
everything is really laggy and hangs, like where i said i have that firewall option, (it hangs)...would that be my windows firewall or an ISP based firewall? I did uninstall a mcafee firewall along with the other mcafee software, but I don't think I ever ran the installer, (didnt know how then)!!
I'm about to just do a destructive system recovery, did it before, but I have alot of pictures and files I'd like to save!! I have some cd/rw's and some floppy's, and on this pc I have "ditto migration kit" along with an older pc if i migrate some date to the older pc (wich is uses an older os and doesn't have ditto mig kit), can i put the date back on this pc somehow afterwards, how do i link up the two systems for the transfer?
any other possible solutions for the troubles described above would be immensly appreciated,

my specs are:
amd athlon 1.4
512mb ddr
60gb
bora bora? A7M266-M
gf4 ti4600 128
sounblaster live 5.1
winxp home 2002
dsl, no routers or hubs
???

thanks for any help in advance!

From what you've explained, the firewall you are referring to is simply the inclusive "Internet Connection Firewall" that is part of Windows XP. I have never known it not be displayed in the Advanced Tab before.

As for mirroring your data, I would take the easy route and use CD-RWs unless you want to attempt a serial connection between your PCs. I'm a bit fuzzy on networking I'm afraid but I thought someone should at least respond to your request for assistance.

Hopefully this sparks off a more helpful reply.