Where-abouts can I check the system logs btw?
Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer
If it all seems to be ok and your machine is running slow, get a S.M.A.R.T event viewer and have a look at the error logs of the hard disk. You may find that the HD is on the way out - which could be causing the hand at the start, if the BIOS is having trouble actually autodetecting the HD.
Any idea on where to get a freeware tool of the sorts?
I seem to remember the latest Hiren's Ultimate Boot CD having a tool to look at that.
As far as a routine reformat goes, I've had a single XP install last 4 years. I managed to trash the MBR and partition table one day, so I started from scratch. That install went through two laptops (a Dell to an Acer), and if it wasn't for the fact that my new Acer that I bought last week didn't have a ready collection of drivers, that install would have gone into a third machine.
I find XP to be like a car: if you do lots of maintenance (regular defrags, cleanouts and registry fixups), it lasts and lasts.
A good defragger is worth it's weight in gold. Perfect Disk, for example, can defrag your swap file. Since the swap file rows as needed into empty space, it is quite liable to get heavily fragmented and kill system performance, and there's nothing the default XP defragger can do about it.