Very slow computer

Well, I'd say, start with Norton or McAfee and see what either of them turns up. Also, when did you notice the problem, and what was going on beforehand (e. g. you downloaded something big, you opened an email with an attachment from someone you don't know, or something like that)?

very slow computer
Have you tried making sure that you have no programs running - and that includes screen savers and wallpaper.

very slow computer
Also, have you tried disabling your antivirus before defragmenting?

Have you cleaned out cookies and temp files?

You might also want to run ad-aware from Lavasoft.

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

Spy / Ad ware could be slowing down your computer. Does Gator ring a bell?

I use SpyBot Search and Destroy. Doesnt fail me. If it comes down to it just formatt your computer. Always work from your control panel.

some suggestions...

-open up your task manager and check your running processes... Sort by memory usage and see if there's anything unusual or an excessive amount. If you're unsure, plug what you see into google and you can quickly see what each one is, and if it should be there - or if it's associated with a virus. Start killing things and see if runs better.

-check your event viewer for any excessive red X's - you might see hard disk write errors or something - indicating a hardware problem.

-increase your virtual memory/pagefile size. Right click 'my computer' go to properties, 'advanced' tab, and those settings are in the 'performance options' box.

-open your device manager and check the properties of your primary and secondary IDE channels. Make sure they are set to 'DMA if available', this is 'direct memory access'. Mainly concerned about the channel with your hard drive(s), assumably the primary, but if you've got a CD-Burner on your secondary, and DMA isn't currently set, you could see performance increase with that also.

-run msconfig and see what programs are starting up with your system - clear everything that isn't absolutely neccesary. Check your services while you're at it - check the 'hide all microsoft services' and see what's left.

-make sure you have all the current updates from windows update.

-if the problem seems to be with one or two applications, try reinstalling those applications.

-remove any unused programs and clean/defrag your registry. there's all kinds of utilities for this. don't use 'window washer' or anything like that, just a basic registry utility.

-if all else fails, before you format, do a repair on your system files. Get hold of a bootable XP CD, and proceed like your doing a clean install. It'll ask if you want to repair using the recovery console - say no and proceed with install, it'll then search for previous versions of windows and prompt to press 'R' to repair. This will replace all the core system files and leave everything else intact. You'll have to do your service pack and updates again though.

-my guess is you've probably got a lot of **** starting with computer and it's eating your memory. check out your runnning processes, startup applications, and services, and take it from there.


hope this helps a little....

detailed info from microsoft here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341&Product=winxp