will emachines recovery cd reinstall complete os?

You might want to research "canned air and thermal paste".

Dafydd.

I have sent for the recovery CD. I would like to reinstall Windows 7 if possible, or at least have the recovery disk help get XP into better shape if not?
You are right though, heat seems to be a problem. I wondered, and got a free program (SpeedFan) to monitor temps. It was running with the hard drive about 44C, then it would crash frequently, often just the monitor. I removed one side of the casing, blew some canned air into there that my stepson gave me (not a huge amount of dust, but a cobwebby-looking layer on the metal fins behind the main fan). It is an eMachines EL1330, parts jammed in a smallish box, hard drive tucked in behind the DVD player - the hard drive was getting fairly hot to the touch. For now I am running it with the box open, and an external fan blowing on it. Hard drive temp now 37 C, better than before, and it does seem to be running better than before. When I called my stepson just now he said it needs a better fan - he'll likely fix that for me, also he would know about thermal paste, he's pretty good with hardware, I'm not.
Thanks a bunch for the assistance!

A good cleaning with canned air that is, fans and cpu would help a lot. Have your stepson do the work and let us know.
All the best,
Dafydd.

You were right about the heat! Sorry for not giving further feedback sooner - I keep the computer at my office and am only at it part of the week. My stepson replaced the fan (it was only running 600 rpm) with one which runs around 3000 rpm, and put in some heat paste (he calls it thermal grease). The hard drive will get up to 47C at times, but the cpu stays around 26 to 30 degrees, and all seems stable so far.
The eMachines recovery CD did indeed reload the entire Windows 7 operating system - it gave me a choice of that or repairing Windows 7 while keeping old files, since I just had XP on there I went for the whole hog choice.
All seems well now (knock on wood), but I do wonder if I should not have opted for "load essential programs and updates only" rather than "recommended programs and updates", as it has put a whole load of stuff on my machine, much of which I know little about, and am dubious about activating.
I may yet reload again using the "essential" option, or perhaps just change my Windows update settings?
The swift and accurate advice you gave me is very much appreciated. Thanks again!