Techidiot

I have an HP Omnibook 6000 with Windows 2000 Professional (upgraded from the Win 98 that came loaded on it). As you can see from my username, I don't know squat and am hoping I can get some guidance in Plain English because, well, I'm old and don't have time to catch up. The notebook boots VERY slow. I upgraded to 512 RAM, there is very little or no data on the notebook (most of my data is on my PC). I've tried everything I know how to do, running all the clean up and maintenance programs I have available and nothing seems to work. Norton System Works & Anti Virus are on the laptop and I understand that is problematic to some as well. I know zip about partitions, FAT 32 or NTFS, etc. I just bought a full version of Win 2000 Pro to do a clean install but when I read the instructions I start to panic. Can anyone guide me through this? I know I will need to reinstall other software programs, etc. That's not a big deal. I just want to start clean to see if that fixes the problem. The depth of my understanding of DOS, FDISK and boot disks is pretty pathetic too, so if you tell me, pretend you're speaking to someone that is mentally challenged. Thank you :-))))