slow boot and slow text display

I am having difficulties with my father's dell laptop. 3 weeks ago he started
experiencing slow boot up. It takes the computer 5 + minutes to get to the
log on screen and then another 5 to bring up the desktop and that comes up
bit by bit. He also is experiencing a delay in what he types and the display.
A lag of about 5 seconds. His machine installed IE7 on automatic updates but
I uninstalled that already. This all started after he defragged his hard
drive. I have remotely looked at his machine and I don't see why it is
lagging. There doesn't seem to be anything showing up in the task manager
that shouldn't be there. I have run scan disk and another defrag but that
hasn't shown any new problems. Norton says there aren't any viruses on the
machine either. Any ideas?
--
csw3rd

On boot up: Do you have the hard drive light constantly on? If so, backup
your data because you may soon have a hard drive failure.

I am asking because I have notices that XP eats HDD on Dell machines. I have
replaced literally 100's

Please post back the answer to my question

--
Newbie Coder
(It's just a name)