Massively Slow System

[30Nick]

Laptop: Dell Inspiron 1300
RAM: 256Mb
HD: 60GB
OS: Windows XP

My laptop is really slow to fully boot up, sometimes taking up to 20mins for everything to be booted up. Also when i try to run a program, agai it take upwards of 10mins for that program to get going and then when it is running it is very slow and unreactive.

I have been told that it has some bad sectors on the hard drive. Most of my data had been saved.

Any suggestions with what to do?
Possibly reformat the disk - if so any suggestions on how to go about doing that?

Cheers

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

I would first try all the steps here:
http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,62253.0.html

[Broni]

...and this:
RAM: 256Mb