I answered on the weight loss forum -with how to do the system restore, and if that doesn't work then you might need a new hard drive.

You might mean a flash drive or a zip drive??
for saving & data storage

in system tools the clean up and defrag are good tools that might help too

Or you can get a second hard drive and install the XP {and copy the whole XP CD on to it too -in it's own separate file} then copy the important files /programs to the new drive.

then reformat the old one and start with fresh install on it.
Or you can use it for back up storage.