PC issues/troubleshooting help needed

Hey everyone,
I am seriously at my breaking point with this PC.
Here’s the deal: a few weeks back, a massive thunderstorm hit my neighborhood and fried my network card. I tried messing around with it for a couple of days before finally taking it to a repair shop. They swapped in a new card and the internet technically works, but everything is incredibly laggy. YouTube videos buffer constantly, Facebook apps are crawling, and when I try to play a quick game of Counter-Strike, I keep getting kicked out with some random error message. It’s just constant, weird connectivity issues.
Then, the day before yesterday, the power went out while I was mid-session. When I woke up the next morning, the internet was basically dead—it "works," but it’s so slow it might as well be broken.
I open up Firefox, and after hitting refresh about a hundred times, a page might actually load. And don't even get me started on CS; I can't even get into a match.
I tried deleting the network adapter in Device Manager and rebooting, but that didn't do squat.
So, I finally just nuked my OS and did a fresh install of Windows.
Now the whole computer is acting glitchy. I try to install a program, and it tells me I'm missing some kernel32.dll file. I tried downloading the DLL, but I can't even extract it because WinRAR won't install, and trying to run WinRAR gives me some sxstrace.exe error.
Man, if anyone knows what's going on, please help me out. I'm losing my mind here.
Windows 7, DSL connection, 2 GB RAM, 2.22 GHz single-core CPU, ATI Radeon X1600

What’s the motherboard manufacturer and model number?

It doesn't say which motherboard we're talking about here...
Like I said before, if you just wipe the drive, delete those partitions, and start fresh—and make sure you try a full format, even though it takes forever—you shouldn't be seeing any errors during the install.
Once the OS is actually up and running, that’s the only time 😁 you should be using Internet Explorer to grab an antivirus and a better browser. Get those updated, run a restart, and then move on to drivers and other software. If everything seems solid, go ahead and create a restore point, then start moving your photos, videos, and music back onto the machine. (If there's any malware hiding in your files, the antivirus should catch it then...)
ps: Personally, I'd also throw Malwarebytes on there and maybe some disk utility tool to check the drive's health.

So, I’ve been running into this weird little pop-up whenever I try to shut down my PC—it says something like "click to turn off and install important updates" or gives me the option to "shut down without installing updates." It's super annoying because it seems to hang there, and I can't get the computer to actually power down normally... so I end up just pulling the plug from the wall, which I know isn't great, but I don't know what else to do. Does anyone actually know what this means or how I can fix it? On top of that, I tried using a System Restore point to go back to an earlier version, but that keeps failing too—every single time, I just get an error saying the system restore wasn't successful. Any advice would be much appreciated!

I need to run some updates from Windows Update—is there supposed to be a progress percentage shown while it installs, or does it just sit there doing nothing?

That’s exactly why your connection feels like it’s crawling whenever a system update starts downloading... honestly, just let it rip. Let it finish the download and even if you shut down, it'll handle the installation. When you boot back up, things might feel a little sluggish while the OS settles in (and yeah, it’ll probably nag you to restart the PC at some point).
Once those updates clear out in a day or two, your computer will actually feel snappy again, and your internet won't be fighting for its life against that massive download. Some people try to block the installs to save time... but I wouldn't recommend it. You really want those security patches and the latest drivers running smoothly.

Larry Ortiz5 said:They have to install those Windows updates—does it actually show a percentage while it's working, or does it just sit there staring at you?

Wait, which thread is this a reply to?

Sorry, that’s really more of a question for you—I didn't mean to quote your post 😁

Larry Ortiz5 said:Oh, sorry—that was actually directed at you, I didn't mean to skip quoting your specific post 😁

Anyway, thanks for the reply! I guess you guys could have made it a bit simpler, though—you younger folks seem to wrap your heads around this stuff way faster than us older people do. I really rely on your answers since I'm a total newbie when it comes to all this

Just let that update finish its thing... Seriously, don't pull the plug or cut the power mid-way—you might just end up making things a whole lot worse.

Alright, but what am I supposed to do about system restores? It’s just not working for me—plus, I don't think I even have any restore points set up...

Why bother rolling back the system if that macOS update is just going to fix itself anyway?