PENTIUM 4 1.7 GHz.. does it still have potential?

With the information you gave I first believe it to be the OS, but the amount of RAM doesn't improve it as well. It could be neither of them. For example the hard drive size and type can play a factor in your computer's speed. Also the other apps that you have installed can definitely slow your system down presenting different symptons and you think it's the OS, RAM, etc when in fact it's the anti-virus or ad-aware or other programs to "protect" you that are running in the background being a memory hog to your system. These apps aren't bad, but they do need resources to run and that might be pulling away from your other OS resources.

If you can load XP, try that. Without knowing all the specs of your PC, it's hard to say exactly. I know that XP will run "ok" on a Pent 4 1.7Ghz w/ 256 RAM, it won't be a gamer PC, but it will run somewhat smoothly.

More ram would help but it makes no diff how new your PC is and how much ram it has if you are going to overload the ram with tons of applications at once! Turn some crap off you dont need running! You probably also have a ton of BS loading at startup! Figure out what you aint usin and disable it from starting up at boot!

the processor is average. 256mb ram is way too low. but i use a dell pentium III 933MHz comp with 256MB ram with win xp (server purposes) and it's still fine. at least it doesn't hang, it's just plain slow. but upgrading ram is a good start.

Honestly, i think it is the windows 98, not the os itself, but maybe you have too many start up programs running and never clean it. I generally reformat my computer once every year to keep it clean. you will notice the computer is faster after you freshly install windows. but windows xp requires 256MB of ram, so i would recommend 512 or more.

I use a P4 1.8 with a gig of ram and 400Gb of Hard drive space. I really use my computer, mostly re-encoding DVD's and games. Works fine for me.

I blame the OS. You should reinstall about every 6 months. maybe its time...