Hi,
I have been having minor problems crop up here and there for a while. They're usually nothing serious, just annoying (icons for files changing, my recent post on WMP not playing video, for example). Then yesterday, I tried to manually create a Restore point. I understand my ZoneAlarm has a conflict that keeps ME from creating them automatically, so I turned it off. No dice. Even after uninstalling ZA, Restore said I cannot creat a restore point. I tried doing a Restore back a month, previous to my installation of a few things that I thought might be causing the problem, and again, Restore failed. I called Dell and described my problem. Their answer was that a criticle file/files were corrupted and a Reformat was the only solution. She said that, unlike XP, ME has no repair feature for the problem files. My questions are:

1. Is Dell correct, there is no way to fix the problem without reformatting?
2. Should I just upgrade to XP if I'm going to go to all the trouble? Is it that much better than
    ME?
3. If I do upgrade, what are the negatives, other than having to hunt down new drivers for
    everything? Are there privacy issues with XP?
4. Do I have to buy new copies of Office and all the programs that came loaded on my
    computer when I bought it?
5. Are the CD/RWs I burned of photos and other files going to be recognized?
6. I heard XP requires more resources. Given that this is an older system, how much slower 
    will my computer run, especially when doing things like photo editing or multi-tasking? It
    has a 933Mhz PIII, 40GB HD that is about full (I could definitely clean things up a bit), and 
    512mb or RAM.