Yeah, stop downloading the porn.

I'm no guru but it sounds like what was happening to me before I had a catastrophic hard drive failure. I lost all my data but Dell sent me a new replacement.

Quoted: Yes, it was one of those automatic updates from Microsoft, and then the computer was never the same. Where in the control panel do I find a way to uninstall the update? (Assuming I can reboot the computer)

Frank,

Look in Control Panel --> Add or Remove Programs.

Listed alphabetically under "Microsoft", you should see a bunch of stuff beginning with "KB" {Knowledge Base} and a string of numbers. Check the dates on them and try uninstalling them based upon the date of the problem occurance.

Also, I HIGHLY advise getting an extra hard drive (300 GB ata133 drives should be about $120 or so about now) and a $30 external USB 2 enclosure and start extracting all your files, you could be looking at a hdd failure soon.

If you can afford to spend a little more, buy a copy of Norton Ghost  (though you can often get it nearly free after rebates)and make an exact image of the hard drive (dated before the problems if possible) including the OS, across the same ide channel oas the current hdd.

IM me or call me if you need further advice.

Quoted: You really don't need expensive programs to back up your entire HD. Just the saved files and the programs themselves is all you need.

Um....yeah, except if your oem doesn't give you program disks just a drive image on disk with the boot files included.
In the same vein, you need a cloning sw program to get the OS onto a new drive since Winblows won't  copy iteself.

That's why I only shop at Compusa wen they are having sales and I get stuff F R E E after rebate.