Re: CPU easily maxes out in WinXp Pro, IE slow loading
 

:p Hey now, 'dems fightin' words.:p

Why? For me it works better than anything else I've used...

Re: CPU easily maxes out in WinXp Pro, IE slow loading
 

Out of curosity, you say the computer has 1GB ram. Is it one DIMM, 2, or more? If its more then one, it is possible that on of your RAM DIMMS has gone bad, mucking up the system. I personally like Memtest86 though it can be a bit hard to navigate.

One thing that I would do is disable all extraneous services. When we were setting up the webcast for monty madness, our host/encoding computer would crash out after about half an hour of encoding a broadcast because the cpu load would reach 100% for an extended period. I followed blackviper's services guide for windows, and that solved the problem. His site is down, but MajorGeeks has a nice mirror running.

If things still don't improve, try uninstalling Norton.

Re: CPU easily maxes out in WinXp Pro, IE slow loading
 

Zone Alarm has the best firewall, free or otherwise. I have the free version of the firewall in all three of my computers.

http://www.tweakguides.com -> system guides -> TweakGuides Tweaking Companion
A great overall system guide for everyone that likes to experiment with their computer. It goes all the way form the most basic to the advanced tweaks.
This website has great game guides as well. I don't know if you will find the solution here but it's great way to keep your system clean and optimized.