Forgot to mention, the system is running Windows XP Home Edition, with Service Pack 2. Thanks again.
My father's Dell Dimension 4700 has slowed to a crawl for basic functions like looking at the disk size (40-60+ seconds) and the mere opening of Internet Explorer 7. I've uninstalled unused programs, eliminated a number of unused start-up/background programs via msconfig, checked for spyware (clean) using MS Defender, and defragmented the hard drive, and would very much appreciate suggestions on what else to do. It's got a 2.79 GhZ Pentium processor, 33 GB of disk (of which 11.3 GB is free) and 248MB of RAM.
Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic