Why is my computer running so slowly?

Question

Okay... basic information about my computer:
- 768 MB of RAM
- Intel Pentium 4 processor
- 2.80 GHz
- doesn't have a ridiculous amount of stuff on it

/Everything/ runs slowly... even when I only have one or two programs open, and nothing running in the background, everything runs slowly. I do the disk cleanup, the disk defragment... all that stuff, and the computer is still ridiculously slow. It's been like this for a bit, and I cannot figure out the issue. Any advice?

*I've done a spyware/adware/virus scan... nothing.

*I've done the complete restore like you mentioned... :( tis a pain, and I ended up with everything running at the same speed. I've tried it a total of 4 times, I think, and have never gotten a better result. Which makes no sense. Maybe my computer is just completely dead.

Answer 1

Ctrl-Alt-Del to open Task Manager. Select Processes tab. Look for the process that is using too much of cpu % resource. If none, check available memory in Performance tab. If it is low, one or more processes is using a big chunk of memory causing frequent access to Virtual Memory. VM is very SLOW. Try stopping those processes (Norton?, Limewire?, Firefox? Yahoo Messenger? etc.) then check available memory. Once you have more than 100mb available, try running a program again. Its speed should improve.

Answer 2

could be a number of things. viruses malware spyware trojans ....etc or could be two or more programs interfereing with each other lets say they both need to use the same file- the easy way to see if that is the problem is to uninstall any new programs that you recently installed which caused it to later start running slowly. or uninstall any updates recently done. if that doesnt work i would try one of two things for the whole virus situation a) install "spybot: search and destroy" and have that program run and check for problems, if that doesnt work or if it takes too long to download go for b) save your files and info onto a portable hardrive/cd/floppy whatever is avalible, and reinstall windows that is the last resort but always works. it will be a pain to reinstall your programs and updates and stuff but you will survive and its better than puttin up with the turtle comp

Answer 3

any spyware or adware? some programs can be running without you knowing and if there are alot of these programs on ur comp they can slow it down a whole lot. run a virus scan to find spyware and adware ect.