whether to upgrade to windows 7 or windows xp from vista

first of all read the whole text
3 months ago i used to have windows xp sp3 professional it had alot of problems exe files didnt work and whole of the computer slowed down i formatted my hard drive and again installed xp after like 2 hours the exe files again started to become irresponsive and i was stressed.then i thought i should upgrade to vista bcz i had bought it.for three months it worked flawlessly without any problem and no exe problems.now some programs are not working so i have decided to either upgrade to windows 7 or windows xp.i have bought a new windows xp cd so it should work as vista did.which one is better 7 or xp.
my specs:
p4 2.66 hyperthreading enabled
2 gb ram
radeon 9600

I don't think it matters you clearly have a repeating virus or malware infection. XP is outdated but 7 should have more than 2Gb ram.

Well over the years I've used all versions of Windows made 3.1/95/98SE/ME/2000/XP/Vista ans now Win7. On my desktop computer I use WinXP 2002 SP3 which has worked great for a few years. I put a new 2TB hard drive in and reinstalled everything. It has developed one glitch which I wouldn't say is a WinXP but IE8 as I use Outlook Express.

I also have Vista Home Premium 32bit on my laptop which works ok apart from the occasional annoying feature the IE8 crashes now and then not responding. It sents he report to M$ the only thing that comes back is upgrade to IE9 which I hate. IE8 on my WinXP works perfectly so why doesn't it on Vista. I've even thought of uninstalling IE8 back to IE7 but there is an annoying feature on that. You could say use FireFox but why should I? I do have Google Chrome installed only for one site I use.

Sorry for telling you my problems lets get back to yours. Is it worth upgrading Vista to Win7?

First of Microsoft is a multi million dollar company from 1975 that makes operating systems and software to be used on their systems. When they promote a new OS everyone wrongly thinks its a new OS so it must be better than the previous OS. I'm afraid thats a false assumption as there are features that these systems that aren't as good as the older systems, thats my opinion. One of the main selling point of Microsoft has always been compatibilty Bill Gates always said that Windows systems will always be compatible with previous version when there aren't. When they changed to 64bit alot of 32bit apps won't run even if you change the compatibilty option. Outlook Express is one option that was dropped on Vista.

Your problem on WinXP SP3 could be resolved with a fresh install and make sure you have a good anti-virus running along with Malwarebytes.

There are alot of annoying features of Win7 which I hate. I will search this forum for solutions and if nothing if found I'm afraid I will be putting my Vista Home Premium 32bit back even though there are annoying features on there but all the thing I use on Windows still work on it.

Just an FYI. I have a Radeon 9600 card and you have to use the Vista driver in Windows 7. They work OK in Aero but do not fully support the latest and greatest video system. You have 2 choices, format and do a clean install or upgrade to 7 which would involve more ram and most likely should at some point involve a new video card.
One thing to check is the cooling on the CPU download this file : CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting
Post a screenshot of the temps.

You can run Win7 with 2gb RAM. I'd install 32 bit which you're entitled to do with each license.

What's most important is that you get a perfect install as shown in these same steps for Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7.

If you stick with the tools and methods given you'll get and keep a perfect install. If any of the old problems arise again let us know so we can help you with Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7