sounds like you should get a new computer. 1994's a long time to go without at least a fresh install of windows - have you tried defragmenting your hard drive?
I've got a nice Dell Precision dual 4 core 2.8ghz xeon, 32gb of ecc ram, 500gb sas 15k RAID, Samsung 840 pro scratch drive and quardro card. What am I doing to deserve this pain?
My 5 year old Lenovo t61 is fine for ALL other tasks in all other languages.