Laptop Hard Disk does not stop Spinning and being slow, fresh restore install XP

Hello,

I lost my restore cd for my dell inspiron 8100 laptop. It was designed for windows ME / 2000 Professional. When It crashed, I ordered a new restore cd from dell chat. Since they no longer support windows me or 2000 pro, the new cd came with windows XP. This laptop is a Pentium III with 128 mb of ram (this could be the issue). Although, I am going to spend 15 bucks off of ebay to put the maximum 512 mb into it (PC133). Anyways, The hard disk was always sort of like that, it spins a long time until the machine calms down, then you can barley use it. I do have some bad secors on the hard disk. Maybe you can help!! It also seems like, while its not waiting to catch up, but while it can be used, its not too too bad, so I think a drive check, or a ram upgrade will get it going. I tried using full chkdsk command and everything was fine, a scan disk found errors but took wayyy to long. There was also another problem with trying to install windows me/98, they both just claim to have missing files and they always crashed. Sometimes I got a little further with the installs by allowing less of the autoexec.bat, and config.sys files. My goal is just to surf the web and use MS OFFICE here.
Thank You,
-Nathan Fakhouri