Bad results with updates

I have XP Home, SP1 and a couple of hot fixes.

Thought I'd try to get up-to-date at Windows Update.

First it insisted on installing new Update software. The it showed 4
critical updates I should get. I did, and decided to try that for a
while before going for SP2.

Next day IE started crashing every time I tried to open a new window.
And other software slowed. For example, opening a small text file
would take 10-15 seconds. This on a P4 - 2.4GHz machine.

So I used System Restore to remove all the above and now performance
is good again.

Anyone else experience this, and figure out how to fix it?

Thanks.