ÆÆÆÆ

My computer is about 5 years old now. It's been progressively getting worse over the last year or so. About two years ago, we had someone come over to fix our slow speed on the computer. So he came over and installed Windows XP for us (without telling us he did it illegally, not leaving the install disk). We previously had Windows 98. It took a while to get used to XP but now I'm attached to it.

Before the installation of XP, when I would play a game like EverQuest, it'd take me upwards of 4 minutes to "zone" from one part of the game to another. After the fix, it took me sometimes only 5 seconds or so, which is something to be envious of. However, since then the computer has been downgraded in performance once again. In EverQuest it can take up to 6 minutes sometimes to "zone" from one place to another, and many programs are slow to respond; it even takes several minutes to populate lists on drop-down boxes and in the "Add or Remove Programs" option in the Control Panel. Also, starting about a year ago, the monitor has been displaying gray streaks or lines to the side of anything dark, IE text, certain pictures, etc. I would take a screen shot to show you, but since then my PRINT SCRN key has also stopped working. On top of all this, the monitor that I'm currently using is extremely washed-out and faded in appearance. In order to get it to look quasi-normal I have to make Brightness to 0 and Contrast to 100... And then it looks very faded-out, anyway.

The problem with the wash-out appearance is probably in this monitor, but the fine lines and streaks aren't; it's done that with this monitor and another we tried.

And I can't seem to find the source of all of the pop-ups I'm getting, such as clickspring and xadsq.offeroptimizer.

Anyone able to help me find some solutions? Any ideas are welcome!

I'd post my system specifics, but I dunno where to find a list of them...