Old XP Laptop does not save any progress!

Hello there! Before telling the problem I've been dealing with this period, I would also like to apologize for my lack of knowing all of the forum rules. I'm new around this forum, so I hope I haven't posted in the wrong section. If it did happen, I'm really sorry for that.

One of my neighbours asked me if I could clean up the things on his old laptop. I usually do this sort of stuff, so I couldn't believe it would become such a clumsy thing to do. It's about a Sony Vaio PCG-Z1XMP running a Windows XP Ultimate license. Can't really say it's a formidable laptop, at least not for our times. The main idea is that I tried to clean up the things around, update and install some other programs (Office, Adobe Reader, Gimp etc.) so that you could at least work a lil' bit with it. So after finishing all of my work I have restarted it and boom...there it happens. The laptop simply went to its normal state. I mean, everything I have installed, cleaned and added has simply vanished. So it's like someone has reverted all the progress to the first state. I couldn't believe my eyes, and even though I tried to search through the internet for this problem, I still haven't found any solution.
So there is the question. The laptop is, indeed, old, but should I struggle to install a fresh copy of Windows XP, or is it a hardware problem, so any software modifications would be pointless? I hope I made my self 'understandable'. I'm looking forwared to hearing a response from you. Thank you!

 

it would behoove you to install a fresh copy of xp, the issue is either due to malware and/or a virus, or the user account does not have permissions, if the user account has permissions, then it is definitely an infection. no hardware would perform like this, if it were a hardware problem, the laptop would not boot at all.

 

Really-really glad to hear that ! Well, then I'll just go for the fresh copy, hoping that nothing bad is going to happen. Thank you so much once again!

 

you are welcome