So I used system restore to roll back to before the last update, after the reboot all is well again. I then shut down and restarted, same result.
After the required restart the system seemed to take a long time do something (indicator light on) but after a while it seemed to finish and act normal, working fine for about an hour or so, then the trouble started light back on constantly and absolutely everything operating painfully slow. After a few weeks of normal and relatively fast operation, windows automatic updates said there were more updates ready for my computer, they were subsequently downloaded and installed. Upon start up I did windows XP updates (SP3 and others), after which I installed Spybot S&D, as I had no anti-spyware, and uninstalled Avast free ant-virus 4.?, and reinstalled Avast free anti-virus 5.0, both these programs seem to be operating normally, and playing nicely together, I only mention it in the interest of being complete. I recently fixed the power connector and all was well again. This computer hasn't been used in about six months, the power connector was broken. When operating normally it lights up only when the computer is "doing something" for lack of a more technically accurate term. Not sure the exact meaning of this light hard drive, or CPU processing.
When it's acted up the indicator light with the cylinder next to in will light up constantly.
I'm having an odd problem with my Dell Inspiron 1150 laptop w/XP pro SP3, it runs extremely slow, time lapse photography slow.