Hi,
I was asked by a friend to look at their PC - they had bought a rebrubished Packard Bell Machine with a Celeron Chip running windows XP. But it was running extremely slow and crashing occassionally,

Firstly there was only 128MB of RAM installed so I changed thhis and installed a 1GB card. Secondaly I defragmented the hard drive. It has Norton antivrsus running and its showing no issues. The PC is manily used for office applications so nothing too resources hungry, so now I am confused.

wHAT IS THE NEXT BEST COURSE OF ACTION TO TAKE? Rather than just replacing the machine!

Reinstalling windows...

Yeah thats what I thought you'd say! but unfortunately I'm not sure they have all the necessary installation CD's. I have a copy of XP but if I re-install it will I have to then seperately download drivers?

Microsoft only allows 1 pc per cd. If you instal your copy of xp you cannot activate it.
Find the number for Packard Bell and ask them for a recovery disk. The key for xp should be written on the sticker stuck to the back or side of the case.

Just download all the drivers before you reinstall... (Chipset, Graphics, Sound are the essential ones. And don't forget a decent virus protection...)

As for the drivers download pc wizard from the cpu z site and you should be able to find all the specs for the system and then use google to find the drivers.

Norton antivirus is an issue! Get rid of Norton!, it can slow down the machine, and get decent virus protection.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Norton_R [...] d4749.html

get something free and good like avira antivirus. No need to spend money here...

Yeah...Norton is a royal bog fest....well its auto protect is.....you can try to disable that and see if you notice an improvement.

My vote goes for AVG Free
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/

auto protection is for chumps

Yeah get rid of, God help me, Norton. Go with AVG or Avira as said. Just curious, what Celeron chip and how much did they pay for it? right click on My Computer and click properties, it's on the general tab.

whats the model number for the computer so i can find its full specs

Totally agree, I have found that Norton can cause more problems than some of the virus's its supposed to stop. Thats usually one of the first questions I ask when someone asks why their computer is slow. "Do you have Norton or McAfee Antivirus?". Also, I have also found the Norton doesn't pick alot of things up. Almost every computer I have replaced Norton on I have found a virus once I installed another AV. I personally prefer Trendmicro's Pc-Cillin, but its not free. Its light on a system compared to alot of others and includes a firewall that is ranked as one of the best. And for the 50 bucks you buy it for can install it on 3 computers. So, unless you go for a free one, I'd recommend Pc-Cillin.

How big is the hard drive? I like Panda for virus protection.

I agree with the "remove" norton thing. It's a hog.

Goto "trend micro house calls".....google it ...... do what you have to do to get the free online scan running, and let it run until completion. It really does find things other scanners don't.

Also, it sounds like it's an old machine. After using higher quality hardware and going back to something "ancient", it may only seem to be slow. .. ?

Goto microsoft and update everything.

Lastly, some people are in denial about how "good" there machines are. Some think they should last forever and refuse to move up. Hardware goes to hell after a while. And from what I've seen from dell, hp, and those "cow" people....................... you get junk to start with.