Am seriously fed up with my pc now but given that I cannot afford a new one I thought I should try reinstalling Windows?

[Polgara2]

However, I have Windows XP Professional on it currently. I don't have any discs but can get access to XP Home. What would I be losing if I put this on instead? Oh and is there anything I should know about reinstalling XP?

what's happening with it?
Can you reinstall all your software as well?

Well, windows explorer keeps bombing out, it so slow you could almost make a cup of tea whilst waiting for it to load things. Internet explorer keeps bombing out as well - all very annoying when you are in the middle of something . I think I have all the discs for software.

Have you deleted all your cookies, temp internet files and junk.. take any screen savers off and defragmented your drive?

Have you dial up and who is your ISP?

Windows Explorer - I had that problem when it couldn't load one of my drives
IE - does it just eventually come up with could not load page? Have you tried installing Firefox? Do you know what your memory usage is like? Are all other programs OK?

She'll answer in about 20 minutes I imagine

Oh gosh go away to make the cup of tea and what happens .
Well yes have done all those things jellies (several times). I am on broadband (ADSL) with Virgin. It does eventually load things. It frequently comes up with 'Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and has to close'. When I am using Windows explorer (such as to copy/move files around) it is interminably slow and will just close all the windows eventually. It seems to be the operating system because the internet itself works ok iyswim. I had extra memory installed last year but it made no difference.
Don't know anything about firefox.
Have I answered everything there?

doesnt sound like its worth trying firefox...i think you're right and a reinstall is the best bet
don't forget to back up all your files! sure you have thought of that but just on the minute chance yiu didn't!

Have you uninstalled and reinstalled the virgin software? I would ring their help line and tell them how slow it is?

Hah yes, had remembered the back up bit! What about my original question though about XP Pro and Home? Any ideas?

Oops sorry jellies, haven't rung virgin coz they are bloody useless!

no, sorry, lapin might be a better bet!

Ok thanks Stealth, will bump for lapin later on.

erkle.. ....if both IE and explorer are bombing out then it sounds like there's a problem either somewhere in the main system or something is chewing through resources v quickly. Take a look at Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del - then select task manager), go to the processes tab, click the CPU column header twice then list the top 10 processes (the image name column) and how much CPU (CPU column) are being used. If 10 is too many then try top 5.. Sounds more like something is hogging CPU time/memory and starving other stuff... ...drop a line and I'll try and take a quick look at what's what...

oh, won't be around until a bit later though.. .trundling off to pick the monkey up from nursery...

Hmmm not convinced telling you right but....
System Idle Process CPU 96-99 Mem 16
IEXPLORE.EXE CPU 1-3 mem 77,200
explorer.exe cpu 1-2 mem 17,000
usnsvc.exe cpu 1 mem 2,600
The rest of them show CPU as 00.
Various others are taking a lot of memory but don't know if that's right or wrong?
Thanks!

bumpety bump!

and again!

Thanks stealth but no ones listening to us!

seems a lot for explorer to be using.

explorer is your desktop

i think the unsvc is your networky bit

what are the other top 10 applications for memory usage? you might have lots of things running in the background. do you have lots of icons in the bottom right near your clock?
have you uninstalled any software you don't use?
have you done a spybot check and anti-virus check etc?

Bunnyhunny - yes I have done spybot and antivirus and registry and degfrag and something else which I can't remember .
I have 14 icons by the clock - is that a lot?
The highest memory usage is by explorer then msn then svchost (whatever that is) then motiveSB ?

14 items by the clock is a lot - what are they? they are all running in the background..

If you goto XP home you wont lose anyhting as the Pro version is really only for enterprise networks and people who want to create network domains...

When you say you can get ahold of a disk... is this legit or not??.. for XP you require an activation key to make it work once installed.. and you cannot use the same key on multiple systems....

Sounds like to may have some spyware or malware that is killing your PC... you say you have antivirus and antispyware software but are these 100% up to date???

I would suggest you back everything up onto external drive and start again... fault finding like this via a forum can take a really long time and can also be dangerous if you do not know what you are doing...

Good luck

You know just the way you have ended on Good Luck has me feeling very, very nervous!!
That's what I wanted to do, back it all up and start again but I don't have any discs of my own for XP. You have me worried now - so are you saying I won't be able to use these discs that I am getting?
Hmmm what do you suggest then? Oh and yes my spyware and antivirus are upto date. I shall have to fret about ponder this some more .

Hmmm and about why my striking out isn't working .