Hi Built;
One thing that I noticed is that you seem to have too little memory on your Win XP system.
The screen you provide shows only 260MB total (I assume you have a 256MB) which is totally inadequate for Win XP.
Yes, 256MB does allow you to run XP, but just barely. 512MB is generally considered to be the "Sweet Spot" for XP & allows all programs to run more freely with less processor usage & less swap file usage which can really slow things down a lot.
Many systems today come with 1GB of memory.
I was running 512MB on my XP Pro 2.2GHz system but was sometimes running low on memory so I upgrade to 1GB & now the swap file is seldom needed.
When a computer starts to run low on memory it starts using more & more swap file (a space set aside on your hard drive as virtual or swap memory). This will cause a slow down in your computer.
I notice that you only have 46MB of free memory. That may be part you're the problem.
A friend of mine had only 256MB on his Win XP system & was having all kinds of problems running programs. Adobe Acrobat refused to run at all saying that there was insufficient system memory. WinFax Pro was taking forever to assemble a large database to send mailings to club members.
After we added an additional 256MB to bring him up to 512MB all of those problems disappeared. Acrobat now loads without complaint, & WinFax does the same job in 1/5th the time it used to take.
Memory is dirt cheap today & there is no reason to be running only 256KB on an XP system.