My five year old Dell had also slowed to negligible speed. Purchased a new Dell when they were closing out XP. The new one is only a bit faster.........still wait for Outlook and Acrobat to open.

I'm thinking an OS reinstall on the old machine will get it's performance very close to the new one...........considering the minimal needs that I have.

I got a new hard drive for it (the old one was 30GB) and I'm going to see how this approach fares.