Foul, this sucks as I just gave a stick of memory to my bro in law that you could have had. Memory is cheap...try Sams if your a member.

Any time my IE starts acting up I check for spy-ware. Run a program called adaware download make sure you update in the program by clicking the the world icon at the top. Trust me if thats not the solution it will solve future problems .

I doubt he is using Sdram or DDR I would assume he still the older simm strips I have a bag of them in the Lab at work 60ns 70ns

I have a p3 500 board with chip 100.00 installed
30 more for 265 ram and 30 more for a 32 meg Nvidia card
50 for 10 gig drive would include XP pro and Office pro
Mcaffee virus scan , full version of Ad-aware6 pro
and Adsgone Pop up pro , no OSO puder would be right
without Photoshop and Dyno 2000 :D

assuming you have ATX case CD and floppy
I would scrap the drive cause is PO mode 1 very slow
you need a UDMA tranfer rate is way faster
I would save files and copy over to the new drive
in a new folder called MY former Puder :D

I am software engineer and I agree with Troutly.

I know very little about computers, and I agree with Troutly!!!

I've been thinkng about the Dell deal I keep seeing on T.V. It took over 5 minutes to type this post. AGGHH!!!

I'm a Network Engineer and here's my two cents...

All of the advice posted are valid points in troubleshooting your issue(s). The question you need to ask yourself is how much effort "you" want to put into fixing/patching your problem. Judging from the description of your setup, your computer is 4 years old at minimum. Without implying you have not tried to keep your system maintained and up to date, I am assuming that patches and service packs for the OS and installed applications are also way behind (this is not always easy even for the most diligent puter user).

Adding memory and doing some maintenance could improve your performance and be acceptable for a little while, but I would bet that in a short order you will be having problems again. Your hardware setup is one problem, and the "outdated" OS is the second. You could probably invest in upgrading the existing system (hardware), but also really need to upgrade the OS after doing so.

You can probably do this cheaper than F1-00's suggestion (just purchase a new one), but it would probably be pretty close to a wash after considering the money and effort involved, not to mention the solutions would not be a more permanent one.

Bottom line is that I agree with F1-00's suggestion in just buying a "new" system. Save whatever data you need from you current system, start clean with the new, and donate the old one somewhere for a tax write off. You'll be set for the next three years (typical lifespan a computer these days)...

Sorry for being so long winded and good luck with whatever you decide...