Fortunately, I received an external wireless card as a graduation gift and have been using it for the past couple of months (with the built-in wifi permanently turned off). The slowness of the computer is still present though, and I've been trying to read some of the tweaks some of the people have posted on this forum. Speed has slightly improved, but software still take much too long to load, and simple tasks like MP3 playback and video are still not smooth as they once were.
Is there a fix to this besides reinstalling Windows XP? I've also considered using the repair feature in XP that is stickied here, but I'd like some suggestions.