When I type text using XP, in a chat room, or even this textarea right here, a few letters will type, then a pause will occur before the next few show up. If I would hold down any key, about 10 characters appear, then a pause, then more then pause, etc. what would cause this lag?

Does anything else stumble or lag or feel slow. try going into the control panel and opening the keyboard icon. set the repeat rate faster or check other options there. Also i find xp has alot of bs goin on as far as sliding menus ,ballon popup etc. Stop this by right clicking my compter icon/properties/advanced/and under performance click the settings tab.There you can deselect all the flotsom.Also if u have a keyboard with extra software check the manufacturers website for updated drivers. Hope this helps

I rebooted the computer and the lag went away. I'm not sure what was causing it, but it's gone now. so that's good.

I'm glad it works now, but just in case it comes back and you are running office XP turn off the speech recognition in the language bar. (right click task bar or directly from Word) It starts itself up even after you get rid of loading office during startup. This is what was causing this symptom on my computer. It was listening to ambient noise or something so even though it didn't hear words it was still trying.

Sounds like something is using a lot of system resources. Another stick of memory would probably help!