Frustrating Computer Problems (in Off-topic)

I have two main problems that break down into lots of smaller ones. I feel that the CB community is adept in technology and engineering, so I will ask for your advice.

Let's start with my laptop.

The Obvious Symptoms:
The CPU Usage under my Task Manager shows that my CPU is averaging 5% and that my Memory is a steady 2gb/

This causes my computer to run, but INCREDIBLY SLOW!!!

My laptop seems like an easier fix, but the path to the solution completely eludes me. My attempts I have taken to solve this problem is running a system repair, an updated Anti-virus Scan, and running a Disk Check to clean a bunch of unnecessary files. To no avail, this has not worked.

For my brother's desktop.

I believe these problems arose due to an improper shut down. I proceeded to shut down the desktop via start menu, but as it shut down it turned back on. The computer was on, but was not sending any image to the monitor; therefore I manually shut down the computer by holding the power button.

The next I started the computer I immediately saw that the internet was not working and it gave me a message saying "connection status: unknown. the dependency service failed to start"

there was also a message saying that "windows could not connect to the system event notification service service"

I addressed the second problem with this link http://www.consideritfixed.com/2009/02/the-dependency.html (excuse my lack of html knowledge)

Upon completing the instructions and rebooting, the message did not reappear, but the Event Notification Service still wasn't working, and even worse was that the replace nlasvc.dll file that I replaced "Failed to Read Description. Error Code: 2"

I openned CMD with admin props and did a system scan (sfc /scannow) and that identified corrupt files but was unable to repair some of them.

I also reset winsock; whatever that is (netsh winsock reset)

Any viable solutions or are my computers bricked?

Something that may help to know, which OS is running on each machine?

oh yeah xD I'm using Vista x3

Back when I beta tested vista, 1.4 GB of memory was already used after startup, for OS processes. I hope it's improved since then....