I would run a malwarewbytes scan, an then a cleaner like ccleaner an or ATF cleaner see what these tools clean out.

Zep has covered your first problem hopefully, and maybe a large part of the second problem.

On the other issue do you mean the hard drive is working almost continuously and the activity light on the tower is constantly coming on? If so you may want to see how much spare space there is on the hard drive, you need about 20% free to run efficiently allowing the swap file to run. Click Start, click My computer and see how big the hard drive is and how much free space is available. If there is not enough empty space perhaps you could either remove any programs no longer used or save some of your data to CD or DVD to increase the available free space.

Thank you, zep516, I will give your advice a try and get back and let you know how it went.

owbist, I responded before getting your post. The activity light on the tower is constantly blinking.
Total size 69.4 GB
Free space 37.4 GB

Also let us know how much RAM (Memory) is installed?

Right click my computer choose properties? Ram is listed there.

What Anti Virus do you have Installed?

Remember to let malwarebytes remove anything it finds, you click remove selected within the program an make sure it's the most updated version.

spybot used to be one of the top programs to use but now malwarebytes and superantispyware are both superior programs, and both are free.
SUPERAntiSpyware Free Edition
Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
and of course always update prior to running the full scans

zeo516, I have 512 mb or RAM and I have AVG Anti Virus.

I have run Malwarebytes, cc cleaner, and then SuperAntiSpyware as ravencajun suggested.

I will be gone now until Friday evening and then will start using my computer again, so hopefully I will see a difference in performance.

Thanks for all your help, and when I get back and spend some time on it, I will give you an update.

If possible, you might want to consider adding at least another 512MB stick of RAM memory. 512MB is barely enough to run XP. The longer you have the computer, the more running processes you end up having, slowing down the computer

Checking in this evening....it seems to be running much better now. Thanks to each of you.
genes, I will look into adding more RAM.

The disk activity may be caused by your anti-virus software running a complete scan. A scan can slow the operation of other software unless it is set to run in background.

I don't know about other makes of anti-virus software, but "Norton Internet Security" has a feature in its settings to run scans in background. Using this setting helps with computer 'hangups'.

Sometimes, the virus scan software is set to run each time the computer is started. If this is a 'full' scan, it can use up much of your processor's resources for the next couple of hours. A more desireable setting it to scan only critical disk areas on boot-up, and then perform full scans at scheduled times or in background.

Ok to strart off I have a sony vaio vgn-fs980...on a random day my touchpad stopped working and I connected a usb mouse, after a while I got annoyed carrying the mouse with me, I went on a website for help and I followed some instructions on getting the driver downloaded, therefore I did , as soon as my laptop restarted my touchpad was working, however when I tried to go on the net and say thanks for the help I noticed my keyboard wasn't working ,...it only gets the keyboard when its in the start up...I need help...my laptop has been like this for about a year, I really don't have money to get it fixed and I'm a fulltime student I really need my laptop running right...any help? I don't know if this helps but as I went into thr device manager under batteries I noticed that under microsoft AC adapter there was a yellow exclamation mark..and the same for microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery...what should I do.

Lanny2009, start a new thread for your problem. With it tacked onto this one, it most likely will be overlooked and not get many responses.

One question, do you usually use this on battery power or do you use it on AC power?

Gee I took out the battery a day ago and the computer was on and funcitoning so I believe it would be the ac power