System recovery on sony viao laptop and windows updates

[riptide]

Because my laptop has been so slow I did a system recovery and have restored it back to when I first had it. Great improvement but when the windows updates were downloaded they are now showing on my "c drive" whereas before they were in the add/remove program files. Is this okay? Also, have not got word on my laptop anymore and do not have any discs, is the open office free download the same as word and is it safe, or is there a better free download for word I could use. My laptop uses windows xp home edition. If not, will wait till my cousin visits in a month or so and she has the windows xp professional discs.

Many thanks.

Riptide

[rojash]

OpenOffice is fine as a replacement for Word. There's not much point in your waiting for your cousin's visit, as Word is not part of any XP edition (or, in fact of any edition of Windows). It's part of Microsoft Office.
If you need to swap files with other Word users, you'll need to configure OpenOffice so that it defaults to creating and saving files in Word format.