Because my computer is not working very well?

I have a 3 year Dell XPS 400. It was a great computer for us until about a year ago, when the hard drive crashed for a reason yet to be determined. We restored the hard drive through the setup screen that appears during startup. The computer then worked fairly well (did not like new) for a while and then just started getting very slow. Programs would freeze, the Internet was slow and used freeze or not respond, and there are strange error messages that occur during startup and when the desktop screen comes up. We restore the hard drive again. It accelerated a little, but that did not last long and we still have a problem with the freezing of the Internet and programs that are running very slow. We are using Windows XP. Any suggestions before I pop for a new PC?

Dells are notorious for using poor parts of your hard drives. Plastic bearings and the like. Then, very high on the list would be a bad hard drive. Software problems are much cheaper to repair, but (free), then you may want to try some type of anti-spyware cleaning and see if that helps. If you want to try cleaning your system, I would look to install several free applications. If you do not currently use a program virus scan (AVG, Norton, McAfee) you definitely want to look at it. It may be worth it to you leave your computer looked at by a technician. That would cost some money, but they would be able to tell what is wrong and whether or not they can fix it. Good free programs to combat viruses, and malware trogans. Antivirus: AVG Free http://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10320142.html?tag=mncol detection of malware: Spybot – Detection of malware http://www. safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html: Adaware – http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-Anniversary-Edition/3000-8022_4-10045910.html? tag = mncol My absolute favorite program to clean a system is Winpatrol (free). But we need a more advanced approach. Kind of the tours do it yourself. Get it here: http://www.winpatrol.com/download.html feature list: http://www.winpatrol.com/features.html Hope this helps