Help computer sluggish

[TEKKA]

Hey guys,
The Desktop in my sig is performing very sluggish, its been doing this for a while now.
I have tried these.
Defrag using Tune-up utilities 08 and windows one
AVG 8.0 Free anti-virus scans
Windows defender scan
registry tune-up/registry defrag
removed unwanted start-up items
ad-aware scans
system optimizer using Tune-up
Spybot search and destroy (empty)
Ashampoo win-optimizer 4
Ccleaner to remove any of that shit
Advanced uninstaller to clean up anthing i dont need

Im not sure what else to do.
Sometimes the computer will be fine and other times it will take ages just to open start menu.
I have 41.5GB of free space so its not like my HDD is full or anything.
My parents 4yr old P4 2.66Ghz 1.5Gb ram 80Gb hdd seems to be faster.

My last resort will be to format and start again.

Thanks for any help guys.

Blake

EDIT: BTW im runing Windows XP Pro with SP3

 

[Seth]

Format it and see if its hardware. Cos if it is then it will still be slow after the format. Personally i'd be looking at the 1GB of ram or the fact its a Hitachi hard drive lol

 

[headshot0123]

Try a destructive restore. That's really all you can do at this point.

 

[TEKKA]

Format it and see if its hardware. Cos if it is then it will still be slow after the format. Personally i'd be looking at the 1GB of ram or the fact its a Hitachi hard drive lol

Try a destructive restore. That's really all you can do at this point.

Ooops its actually a Seagate Barracuda, the Hitachi was my old drive.
I really dont want to have to format and start over but if its my last option.

Thanks headshot i will give it ago.

Also forgot to mention, i had recently ghosted my drive over to a new seagate (the one im using now) because i thought i was my old drive playing up, so i dont think its hardware related to the drive it self.

Also the computer is almost 3 months old.

I dont mind buying more ram, but i would think a core 2 duo e4600 @ 2.4 with 1gb ram, would surely be better than a P4 2.6 with 1.5GB ram.