Restarting with my computer

[EnderXC]

My family's computer has become slower and slower. It's a gateway P4 2.533 with 512MB DDR333. Even though I have run adaware, S&D, and NIS 2004; it takes forever for and it slows down so much when it multitask. Because it's a gateway it has also become inadated with software that i don't need but can't get rid of. I want to start over new. I was thinking of a reformat but will that get rid of everything or will the ghost of spyware past haunt me forever? I can't switch the family from AOL to Firefox because they're not that tech savy and would have to relearn all the things that I have struggled to teach them . So, i have created a list of software i should run and use on it once i reformat or whatever:

Norton Internet Security 2004
Adaware
Spybot S&D
Spyblaster
AOL (basic stuff only) (I might convice them to switch to firefox/thunderbird/trillian, but i doubt it)
the new spyware beta from MS
Various Driver (digital camera)
MS Office Pro
Win XP SP2 -- can i use my SP2 CD with the old CD code from their SP1 Cd?
Defrag after all in installions

I know it won't be as fast as my comp but i at least won't have them whining to me about how slow it is. please tell me if there is any more software that can help, thanks

 

[tim_m]

if they are both oem or both retail then it should work. i'm not certain exactly what differences there were between retail and oem as far as keys go since i've only ever bought oem but if they're both oem you'll be fine. for the most part, microsoft doesn't care about which physical cd you use so long as you use your own key