Need Tech Goddess' or God's Help--Loooong Msg. - Lois

I’m not particularly good/knowledgeable about my ‘puter’s innards’, I’ve questions about my hard drive that I’d like some help, tutoring, and guidance with. 

Stats:  HP Pavilion desktop (almost 5 yo), with XP, AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3500+, 2.20 GHz, 960 MB of RAM.  Using IE8. 

Problems:  Right out of the box, literally from the moment of unpacking, this hunk of junk has never worked right.  I’ve battled HP without success for the 3 yr. service contract and even via letter to the lately departed CEO, Hurd.  Just to name a pertinent few:  

--Unable to make a ‘rescue CD.  I can’t download any-freakin’-thing to CD in fact. 

--Sometimes I can download audio books or movies onto the hard drive, but the items absolutely will not play. 

--Mute button on keyboard works when it wants to, as do the built-in speakers. 

-- Keyboard codes assigned (cut, copy, etc.,) can be unstable as can the tool bar, requiring that I reset them each time I power up and begin a document. 

--My Google home page I created is unstable; it (and other web sites sometimes insist I upgrade to IE8 or another browser.  My home page reverts to the generic Google page or a page that invites me to create my own home page...again. 

 --My platform is ExText, which creates its own private hell as it interacts with my computer—slow downloads, no downloads, files stuck in the pipeline, lost ESP expansions & normals/templates,  Outlook refuses me access to my e-mail at one point or another (I’ve about 800 & counting now, etc.  These things have occurred ffor the better part of a year+ in each of my 2 back-to-back ExText jobs.  

--Then, finally, most of the ExText problems generally clear up (after months to a year), but not entirely.  Regardless, I somehow manage to make do and make the rent, but not without a lot of gnashing of teeth, heart failure, sailor curses,.... 

 --Tech support at my current company is worse than useless; don’t bother to suggest them, you’ll get me started....They don’t know and make it clear they don’t want to or to be bothered (the account I have is considered insignificant to them).  And, noooo, don’t suggest management...BTDT or I’ll give you another earful.  BUT, if you know of an ExText-based job with decent management and good to decent tech support, I won’t turn my nose up at putting in an application. 

Proposed Solutions: 

--One tech says that a “deep clean” and hard drive reformatting is in order; he says that for other clients that has solved a lot of their problems restoring things back to their factory settings—but my so-called “factory settings” sucked to begin with.  So, I don’t really want to go back there tyvm.  At.  All. 

--Another suggests I add memory (I’ve 2 open slots; was thinking about filling at least 1 to increase speed, help handle the large number of MSW files.  I’ve very few pictures.  I’ve a couple of audio books and films that won’t play.  I’ve also been told not to bother, I’ve plenty of memory, goo-gobs. 

--Performance:  Defragging helped some.  Loading a lot of files from my HD to an external HD I bought helped some—until the new drive failed about 6 mos later. 

--Virus cleaning is vital; I’m overrun of late and expect that to go a long way to clearing up the non-stop crashes I’ve had lately.  But, the problems with crashes, etc., absolutely pre-date by a long time the recent accumulation of viruses. 

Thanks for your help. 

P.S.:  If anybody knows of a class action suit against HP, do dish.  I’ll sign on with bells on my toes.