By Spent all day yesterday reinstalling my PC.
Thanks to my former employers paying me for my accrued holidays; which I wasn't expecting, I had some extra cash on hand and decided to take the opportunity to upgrade the PC. New spec is visible under the 'About Me' link on the side.
After swapping out the old bits and installing the new bits I was amazed to find that XP still booted all the way. It grumbled about needing to be reactivated but otherwise seemed fine. Anyway, needed to reboot to set up the last of the drivers and it just sat there at the 'Logging Off' screen
Since, I had been prepared to reformat; I'd already backed up my critical documents etc; I decided to go ahead. The reinstall of XP took about 30 minutes and then it was a case of downloading updates and installing software. I'm almost there now; just a few more games to go.
Weird thing is Unreal Tournament 3 now refuses to run; kicking me out on the CD Key entry screen; whereas it used to warn me about my system spec but continue anyway. Medal of Honor: Airborne refuses to even install; kicking me out before it even installs the Ageia drivers, but there has been loads of problems referred to on the EA forums about it. Will try a couple of things today to see if I can fix it, otherwise I'll be playing it on my Dad's PC.
Discovered that I'd managed to get a couple of viruses and trojans thanks to doing Windows Updates before having any AV software installed. Removed them and UT3 now works.
Uninstalled the Ageia drivers and Medal of Honor: Airborne installed fine. Updated them again afterwards to ensure everything else still runs.
Well pleased with the performance increase I've gained; especially, considering the fact that I spent less than £130.