Laptop Problems

Apologies if I am posting this in the wrong place but I am not sure what is causing my problem.

My daughter's laptop an Acer running XP Home is playing up. It is very slow and when I click on a menu it flashes but won't stay on the screen. Presssing control whilst clicking the mouse gets it to display but it then starts flashing and is unstable. Also firefox won't load, we just get a message saying "stopped" in the bottom left hand corner.

I have replaced the ram as someone said it might be faulty but no help.

I am thinking of re-installing windows but before I do - if anyone can give me any advice it would be very helpful.

 

Run a good virus/spyware ( program as it may be one of the two. If theres nothing important on the unit a restore should fix all.

 

Thanks for the reply - I am running all I can which are already on the machine. I can't download any more as I can't connect it to the internet.

I may try a re-install!