I have two XP boxes. There are identical (or where when I purchased them). Theya re both HP Pavillions (and yes I have learned not to do that again).

The one that lives int he front romm has been inspected by me personally for virus or malware. As I charge people money to clean thier PCs of that junk I feel sure that I would need to quit my line of work should I have missed anything.

This PC has two issues.

1 - it is much slower than the other (it also takes an age to shutdown)
2 - it has networking issues.

I'm guessing the two are related.

When I attempt to inspect "MyNetwork" to commune with the pile-o-crap [TM] Win98 games PC (or any linux box I might be failing to understand) I find that the network adapter is not listed.

The normal uninstall drivers and reboot has failed to work.

I want more speed (Greed) but something is gobbling up all the power (glutton) I don't realy want to have run HP recovery tools (pride) and don't fancy running setup (sloth) and wish it would run nice and fast like the other box (envy). It's not used to look at porn (lust, phew escaped that one) but it is making me (and any one else that uses it) very angry (wrath)

I feel like I have paid my time in hell and now want to progress towards the delight of a PC that does not boot up "in a day and a half".

Any ideas.