Windows XP Home Picture and Fax Viewer Crashing?

I've got Windows XP Home with SP2 and in the last few months my picture viewer has started crashing when I close a window. (I'm simply opening the My Pictures photos and its contents) It is steadily worsening so now (in addition to crashing) it takes 5x longer to load the thumbnail previews, longer to rotate a photo or to rename it. If when I am viewing an individual photo and decide to close it 7 out of 10x it will crash the program and All picture folders and open windows will crash. I have to use task manager to shut them down and start again. It doesn't matter if this is a picture from my camera, or an image I saved off the net. My Music folders and My Documents seem to have no problems. I have plenty of RAM, and my graphics card still runs the Sims2 and allows me to watch movies online so..... Yeah what can I do to fix this? Is there a Windows program that can repair windows xp? All help is greatly appreciated. Thanks

Windows XP Home Picture and Fax Viewer Crashing?windows firewall

try this: go to my computer/ right click c: click properties/tools then click 'check now'. hope this help