why is my comp sooo slow?!?

i have a resonably new computer with average specs:
256sd ram
20 gig hardrive
xp
athalon 2.2
it has all been working fine for 6 months but nearly all of a suddden it has slowed down dramticly with long loading times and poor preformance. anyone got any ideas why and what ic an do to fix it?

thanks, dan

Do you have an up-to-date virus scanner? I'd run that first the make sure...

Yeah - my friend's Athlon 2600 went a bit Virusy recently. You should check it over with a Virsu Scanner.

Try defragmenting your system and scanning it for viruses. Also, make sure to run Disk Cleanup or a similar program to get rid of junk files. If you installed something huge onto your hard drive, then it might have caused the slow down, since windows has to go through more files on the hard drive to find a certain file.

Problem solved

Your computer tends to run slow from time to time because of all the programs installed and deleted periodically..

The best thing to do is to run disk deframenter, scandisk, and you anitvirus, and make sure you downlaod a free registry cleaner..

And when it imporves download th free trial of pc booster and it will tweak your computer boot time and application speed.

I hope this helped.

spyware!

Make sure not to let XP load any unnecessary background processes on startup, that way you minimize the memory usage, 256Mb is easy to waste and then overall performance will start to suffer. Theres some excellent tweak guides out there if you want to learn how to optimize your os. Do a google and you'll find heaps..

Or...

Alternatively, your HDD may be starting to die on you. Oftne it either goes without warning or simply starts slowing down. I do think that it could more likely be one of the reasons mentioned above.

JAN

Process of elimination, try these steps first, then tweak your os and HD scan:

1. Disable System Restore (right-click on "My Computer", Properties, System Restore, check Turn off System Restore).

2. Enable viewing of all files/folders (open "My Computer", Tools, Folder Options, View, click "View hidden folders and files" and uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types").

3. Update your Anti-virus program and run a full scan. If you don't have one or your subscription is out of date, then run BOTH online scans below. If you can run a scan with your updated Anti-virus program, then just run ONE of the online scans below.

http://www.pandasoftware.com/active...n_principal.htm

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/hou.../start_corp.asp

4. Download CWShredder, VX2finder, Kill2me, and run them. Let them fix what they find. See these links for download:
http://www.intermute.com/spysubtrac...r_download.html
http://www.pchell.com/downloads/vx2finder.exe
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/kill2me.zip

5. Now, download Ad-Aware SE, and SpyBot, (both are free, see links below) install them and update them seperately. Then run a FULL system scan with Ad-Aware, (not the Smart Scan), and check all the items it finds/let it remove them. Run SpyBot and scan, let it remove what it finds. REBOOT your machine and run them again, TAKE NOTE of what items still remain that they couldn't get ride of! Some items will be taken off from a 2nd scan and some items they will NOT be able to remove at all, (Note what those items are).

http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE...ubj=dl&tag=top5
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html

I'll just confirm what others have said . I would firstly do a spyware scan on your system and clean er up. Secondly what are you doing with the computer at the times it's acting slow? 256mb's of ram is pretty weak. What speed is your ram? I'd put in at a minimum another stick of 256 giving you a total of 512ddr and if you have some cash to spare put in 1gb and let your system breath .

Was it really neccesary to ressurect a year-old thread?