My system was running fine and then over the next 3 hours the system starts to slow to the point that it takes a few seconds for the cursor to react to the mouse movement. I performed live update with Norton Anti-virus to assure that it is the most current and then did a full scan. A couple hours later it came back and said there were no viruses found. I rebooted the computer only to have it go to a black screen with the mouse cursor. I rebooted in safe mode and tried to restore the system to a point three days ago, but I get the same results. Any ideas?

Try running System File Checker, goto Start > Run, type....... SFC /SCANNOW and hit enter, you will be asked for your Xp CD. Doing this will scan, and repair as necessary, all system files.

I tried that but when I hit enter, the screen does a quick flash and then does nothing else, as though I had not entered anything. I tried to typing the sfc /scannow after rebooting in safe mode with command prompt.I received an error message that says, "Windows file protection could not initiate a scan of protected system files. The specific error code is 0x000006 ba [The RPC server is unavailable.]" Any other ideas?