computer complications

Something strange is happening to my computer and I don't like it. I think we're edging towards a reformat in the near future.
I was doing a scan for adware and removing it when my computer decided to restart itself. When Windows came back up, there was no sound, no taskbar, and no start menu. Only thing there was, was the desktop. My wife and I tried going into Safe Mode and doing a System Restore, but that function couldn't be accessed. we wound up using the Windows XP CD to repair Windows and that seemed to fix the problem. However, my screen reading software was giving me Video intercept problems, so I had to uninstall it, then reinstall it again. Once that was done, things seemed to be all fixed. Only problem however, is with the screen reader. It will start automatically, but it won't start speaking until I load up something else. I have a backup speech package called NVDA. You can go to http://www.nvda-project.org to find out about it. I'm taking this week to back all my major programs up, and moving things to my external hard drive. I have created an MS-DOS startup diskette, which I will use to reformat my hard drive and then, use my Windows XP CD to reinstall Windows fresh. After that, it will be a tidious process of putting all my programs back on, registering all the programs I have licenses for, etc. Probably another week at best to get everything fully up and running. I know it's good to wipe everything off after a period of time. I haven't reformatted in over three years. It probably hasn't been that long, but it sure feels like it.
That's all I have to report on the computer issues right now.