seeing as how i'm not a computer technician, is there any way i can upgrade my laptop's operating system myself?

Running many programs simultaneously, or having very little RAM, or both, contribute to poor system performance.  An antivirus that uses a lot of resources will slow the system as well.

Click Start, right-click My Computer, and click Properties, What amount of RAM is reported?

Norton Antivirus is quite capable, but bogs down older hardware.  Consider using BitDefender Antivirus (also available in a free version) or Kaspersky, both of which have the least impact on performance while providing outstanding protection.

Malware of various kinds affect performance, and no antivirus detects everything, so I recommend scanning with AdwCleaner, plus the free versions of MalwareBytes Anti-Malware and SuperAntiSpyware.

    AdwCleaner

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleane...

    MalwareBytes Anti-Malware

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/malwareby...

    SuperAntiSpyware

http://www.superantispyware.com/downloadfile.html?...

After the computer has been disinfected, install CCleaner Free and run the program.

https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

Under Cleaner, right-click the Windows tab and click Uncheck All, then select Temporary Internet Files, Empty Recycle Bin, and Temporary files.

Click the Applications tab, then right-click and click Uncheck All.  Select the Internet Cache checkbox(es).  Click Run CCleaner and OK.

Click Tools and Startup.  Under the Windows tab, disable each item by a double-click, except your antivirus and firewall software.  Under Scheduled Tasks, similarly disable anything unrelated to your security software.

Restart the computer.

you didn't post any specifications of your PC but pretty much you can always use more ram.

As much as you can afford up to the max your motherboard/operating system can handle.

its the best thing you can do for a computer to make it run faster.

there are many kinds of memory chips so in order to upgrade it you need to look up your motherboard model on a memory chip manufacturers website.

you can clean up your current operating system with the programs the other poster mentioned, that is all good stuff.

I have an issue that you used the term upgrade, and if you meant install a newer operating system on your computer thats a bad idea, its not an upgrade, that would be a downgrade, i will tell you why.

heres why installing a newer operating system on an older computer is a bad idea,

computer manufacturers are building newer faster hardware at blindly fast speeds and when windows xp came out it was optimised to run on the hardware of that era. dual core processors weren't available yet, they had 1ghx single core processors or slower and the best consumer computers only had 1 or 2 gig of ram at the most, many came with 128, or 256 mb of ram. by the time windows 7 came out the hardware had already way surpassed the windows xp operating system and so the operating system was designed to run on the much faster hardware with more memory.

the hardware requirements of windows 7 doesn't overlap with windows XP so although people do it every day it never works out to be faster, you would be disappointed in the loss in performance.

the poster ME2 that gave you suggestions knows his stuff. those are all the programs i also use when disinfecting computers.Just one note though, if you already have other antivirus programs running on a real slow computer do not activate the 30 day free trial of malwarebytes pro it will slow down your computer even more, do install it and use it as a one time scanner to clean out any malware in the system as norton isn't that capable of catching most spamware. malware, crapware programs.

i do run malwarebytes pro real time protection on my PC in conjunction with Avira Free Antivirus, but i don't have an issue because my old pc is quick enough.

to summarize, my suggestion add ram, clean your current OS

Good luck

Lanshark