2 year old Dell with Windows XP- Right after I connect to my dial up service and before I connect to the internet browser(Opera) my computer will "grind" for at least 3 minutes before it does anything. I thought I had read somewhere where this is normal for Windows XP. Yesterday I bought an 80gb external hard drive plus 256 memory which will double my memory. First is it normal to grind this long and when I connect the hard drive and add the memory will this change? Thanks for the help! John

Normal? No!

The external drive shouldn't have much of an effect on your Operating System itself as it is a seperate drive. If you have a memory shortage XP might use it for page file. The RAM will be more helpfull.

I would try to get the current system working well before you make changes tho.

Do you use Adaware & Spybot? Do you defrag? Clear temp files?

Also try check disk:
start > run > cmd
in the new window type chkdsk/f
when prompted to run on boot choose Y & reboot
this will check for & fix any disk errors.

Let us know if any of this helps.