new harddrive questions?

My laptop runs like crap so I'm gonna get a new hard drive and upgrade the memory to something like a gig... I was wondering if this is something relatively easy? or should I leave it to a professional... I'm reasonably technically inclined....
Do I just pop out the old drive... Put in a new one... and swap the memory out... then install operating-system and boot from cd then partition/ format drive... And as for memory... is it as simple as swapping it out...?
The reason I'm doing this is because I want a larger drive, my computer runs slow, and when I try to reinstall windows xp from the cd, everything seems to stall when reformatting my hard drive- at 53%... tried it a couple of times and figured... hard drives are pretty cheap anyways...
And... If I do this... will this help my system run faster... the problem is I'm running ableton live and everything starts to bog down because I'm overtaxing everything... I don't want a lot more speed... just a little bit...
I've also read things about storing something such as my audio sample library on an external hard drive... instead of the main... does this help? SO thanks for reading this loooooooooooooooooooooooooooong post.....:duck

 

Most laptop manufacturers provide instructions for replacing/upgrading memory, and replacing the hard disk. You just have to check around their SUPPORT section on the site. There's usually "pictorial" instructions on opening the unit and accessing the appropriate areas.

Just ensure that the hard disk and memory are compatable with your model. There may be a "cap" on the hard disk size supported by the machines bios. They should also list the "tested/compatable" memory modules for your machine. Just "any" memory module may not work correctly.