Hi all - A friend is running an xp service pack 3 machine. He's sighted, and only really a lite user. His machine only has 256mb internal memory, but was running ok until a few months ago, when everything slowed down, and it started taking say about 2-3 minutes for programme to load, or shut down. I got him to do a defrag and disc clean up, and run antivirus software, but with no improvement to his problem The machine is 8 years old. Is there anything else we might consider that could help speed it up, or is the most likely problem a failing motherboard in an old machine? Like I say, it has never been heavily used, and use to perform at a much more acceptible pace. Thanks for any ideas shared - Andy