In 9 yrs. I've RE-INSTALLED XP 5 times because THAT was the ONLY fixthat made my Dell Dimension 8250 run fast. I kept up on all updates, ran file cleaners, defragged the hard drive, put settings towards performance not visuals, even added 512mb more of ram (1GB total) that DID for a month or 2 really speed things up, but that too is back to being slow. The last time I put the XP disk in it gave this msg: "SetUp cannot continue because the version of windows on your computer is newer that the version on the CD". ANY HELP is GREATFULLY Appreciated as that is the extent of my fix-it abilities - happy to post here any info you might need to diagnose this bottle-neck issue, thank you, Patrick1 person needs an answerI do too

Do yourself a favor. After your next reinstall and after you get it to the point you are happy with it (install SP3 and all subsequent security patches, install all the programs you regularly use, install a good antivirus program, install the latest versions of Adobe Flash and Java, etc.), make an image of your hard drive. This way you will NEVER need to reinstall your OS again! Acronis and Paragon are good programs. DriveImageXML is a good freebie (but does not have as many features as the paid imaging programs).Regarding sluggishness in general, here are the usual causes:1. Malicious software (malware). You need to rule this out first! This page has excellent information:http://web.archive.org/web/20080610163247/http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware2. Certain programs that are designed to combat malware (e.g., Norton and McAfee). Ironically, they can slow things down because they simply use way too many resources. Sometime they cause conflicts with other programs. And their default mode is to scan your entire hard drive each time you boot up. Fortunately, there are other antimalware programs available that use far fewer resources (e.g., NOD32, Avast, and Avira).3. Too many of certain types of programs always running in the background -- with or without your knowledge. (Then again, many programs that run in the background have trivial consequences.)To determine every program and process you are currently running, use the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Processes tab. You should be able to sort by CPU usage or Memory usage to get a good ideas which ones are the resource/memory hogs. You should write down the names of all the processes for future detective work (or take a snapshot and print it out).Use these sites to determine what these programs are and to learn how to configure them not to always run at startup:http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php#THE_PROGRAMShttp://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htmSometimes it is recommended to use msconfig to configure the programs to not run at startup. A better, more thorough program is Autoruns:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspxBut before you do this, you should use the preference settings of the program in question. Otherwise, for some programs, they will return to the startup list anyway!If you do wish to use msconfig, it may be accessed this way:Start | Run | type "msconfig" (without the quotation marks) | Enter (or OK)4. Not enough RAM, which causes the PC to overly rely on the pagefile. A quick way to determine if this is happening is to open Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then note the three values under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit, and Peak.The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory you used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value of Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM. In case you want to explore this further, you may run Page File Monitor for Windows XP:http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm5. You might also want to check that your hard drive's access mode didn't change from DMA to PIO:http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/is-your-hard-disk-cddvd-drives-too-slow-while-copying/andhttp://winhlp.com/node/10