Hello, everyone. I am really worried about my laptop, it has been acting really messed up lately. Okay, here's the deal: a while ago, I erased my updated XP CD with SP2, because it was getting old, and I wanted to update it and make a "fresh" CD. However, when I used my original XP CD (from HP), I found out that it was corrupted and that some files could not copy! Fortunately, I had a backup copy of an old ISO of my mom's old XP CD (for Virtual Machine reasons), so I "merged" both CD's together - now, the original CD of mine was only SP1, but the ISO had SP2, but I used SimpleSlipper to update the whole thing to SP2. Believe me, I know this sounds complicated, but it worked. Heck, the product key wasn't even asked for, and it activated automatically, so it was basically a new SP2 CD of my original CD with a few files from my mom's ISO. No big deal, as all XP CD's virtually have the same files on them anyway. I did a fresh install of XP, then it worked beautifully for a few days. Activation was NOT required, as it was preactivated (thanks, HP!) and I installed the usual (Microsoft Office, Symantec Anti-Virus, and several anti-spyware programs). Now, here's where the problems has been beginning: a few days ago, my computer has been suddenly slowing down severely. Internet Explorer kept "freezing", and the title bar said "Not Responding." This happened in other programs, too, and the whole system felt more slower and sluggish. I thought it was a fragmented drive, so I did a defrag with Diskeeper, which worked pretty well. I also did a FULL virus scan and a FULL (in-depth, mind you!) spyware scan. No problems, absolutely clean. Earlier, I right-clicked on Mozilla Firefox (I have that too, just for kicks) and the whole system froze for a few minutes. The mouse cursor was a "hard" hourglass. I clicked on the Start button, the Desktop - no matter what, it continued showing the hourglass. I pressed CTRL + ALT + DEL, to no avail. However, the mouse was moving, so I gave it some time. It finally unfroze after a few minutes, and it was fine for a few minutes, but then a BSOD suddenly popped up. I was actually pleased that the BSOD occured, because I knew something was seriously wrong (hang-ups all the time, DVDs skipping, non-responding windows, slow startups? please, something's obviously not right), and the error codes were: 0x0000F4 0X000003 0x852AA908 0x852AAA7C 0X80604450 I then restarted, which worked fine, and then the "...this system has recovered from a serious error" dialog appeared, and I sent the error message to Microsoft. Now, here's what scares (and worries) me, and ensures that there IS something wrong. The Microsoft Online Crash Analysis site said this: "Unfortunately, the error report you submitted is corrupted and cannot be analyzed. Corrupted error reports are rare. They can be caused by hardware or software problems, and they usually indicate a serious problem with your computer." I know something is seriously asmiss, but nothing I have done seems to have fixed the problem. Could it be a corrupt installation? But it started working fine from the box. I didn't install anything atypical. Please respond when you can, thanks SO much for your help! It's well-appreciated! :D -Andy PS - Sorry for the length, I just had to explain this in detail to help you guys further...

Andy11, you may indeed have some sort of glitch which indicates a corrupt installation. Before condeming the system, there's one other thing I'd rule out and that's a Trojan. Be aware that a virus and a trojan are similar, but not the same. Many times, a virus scanner can detect one it can't clean , other times, it gets missed entirely. There’s an online trojan scanner @: http://www.trojanscan.com/trojanscan If it turns out that you have one and need to clean, 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. What you describe sounds to me like something's consuming memory and slowing things down. That smacks of something running in the background. May not be your deal at all, but... HTH. Ed in Texas.