yep, i was going to recommend firefox as well, although you'll have to get a lot of the plugins again (e.g. shockwave, flashplayer), but overall its much better
Maybe she means those retarted Windows messaging pop ups. I remember having those things when I first got Windows XP, but I did a little searching around and eventually found out how to stop them.
That's what my hunch was also...was maybe it was the messenger thing. But all you have to do is enable the XP Firewall and they stop coming (easier then digging in to xp)