Windows 2000 not starting up

I have a Dell Inspiron 8500 running W2k, all updates are current. I have to startup 3-4 times before it will run properly. Sometimes I will not be able to connect to the internet but the PC works ok - when that happens I run winsockxpfix and it gets me online. Somehow it gets better the more I startup - but even when it is running it runs very slow – I do have 30% free space on my gard drive and have maxed out the RAM. When I startup I get a popup that says svchost has created errors and will shutdown - I click ok and it goes away and while the mouse moves it will no longer activate any icons. If I ignore the popup I still have a mouse that will not activate an icon. So I do a control alt delete and all the icons disappear and then nothing happens – so I have to press and hold the start button to shutdown. After going through this 3-5 times the PC starts up and runs but is slow – but is at least works. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

Does the system have the same problems when you boot into a safe mode? If you can get things to run, I would suggest a virus/malware scan to see if anything there might be causeing the problems.