A friend of mine told me that all of a sudden his screen went black and he couldn't reboot. A friend of his reloaded the OS. It now takes forever to load and their are other issues including he can't download anything. He didn't lose any data on his hard drive. Does this sound like a virus or something else? Thanks

Golfer24, yeah, some sort of nasty wouldn't be a bad guess. There're several free online scans to try. Pick the one you like best @:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Scanners.htm
It's also possible he has a Trojan. Be aware that a virus and a Trojan are similar, but not the same. Many times, an AV detects one it can't clean , other times, it gets missed entirely.
If you need to clean one, A² can do the job and you can get it free @:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4281.html
among other places.
If it turns out that you need to use it, be sure to update prior to running. They just released a new update recently and it changes all the time. Things are in a constant state of flux.
HTH.
Ed in Texas.

Golfer24

Some sort of nasty is a possibility (see #1) because as you kept your own stuff it was obviously an ME overlay. This rarely removes any nasties present.

Another possibility is too many background tasks starting.

There are standard fixes for ME to make it run better - use "Go Search" feature top right.

I'm more familiar with W95/98 so it would be better that others give the detail regarding the last two.

DerekW