slower and slower and slower and...

My 350 meg Micron Millennia is getting slower and slower. I remember a
few years ago when I went to Qwest DSL from dial up that I could go
from favorite URL to favorite URL in about 1.5 seconds. Now it takes 6
seconds. A short history: Recently, I noticed going to the web took
longer and longer. Also my entries into a Quicken register took as
long as 5 seconds before it would allow me to enter another entry.
Finally the computer would not connect to the internet. Calling Qwest
technical help, they said I needed more memory and should have Win 98
2nd edition. I upgraded last week from 256 meg of RAM to 384, the max
and that seems to make things a little faster, especially when I could
get onto the net again. I also found that my fan was dead when I
changed the memory so maybe I had a heat problem also. So I got a new
fan. I am using Norton Antivirus, Lava Adware personal, Spybot search
and destroy, and Sky sweeper to protect the pc and get rid of those
little varmints. With no programs or internet open, I have 62%
available resources. I really don't want to toss money away by going
to Win 98 2nd edition if it does not help and the computer is too slow
for Win XP. I have noticed ever since I had a large drive put in a
couple years ago, when I had used up most of my existing hard drive,
that when I went to a subdirectory in Word Perfect to open a file, the
new drive took almost 5 seconds to react and open the file. I still
have my old hard drive and it is D-E-F-G as partitioned. Any help
anywhere?

Thanks, Steve