Windows programs stop responding

[Theessence]

I'm on windows XP Pro and the past few weeks all of a sudden, the majority of my programs will not respond at all. I double click the icon, firefox for example, the hourglass comes up, the harddrive reads something then nothing happens. This happens with most of my programs and it is random. Also, sometimes programs stop responding during regular use, although much more frequently, and during times when one wouldn't expect it.

Restarting the computer solves the problem but i don't want to need to restart the computer everytime i want to open another program. Multi-tasking is almost impossible. I'v run antivirus, spyware removal, and ad-aware just in case it may have been one of those types of problems but apparently it isn't. I havn't installed any new software and the only change i can think of is that I am using different ram than before this happened. Corsair is in the process of shipping back my ram but until then I am using some old 333MHz ram. No idea if that could possible cause a problem.

Any Ideas are greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Maddhatter]

have you scanned for virus's lately?

 

[dragon2309]

aswell as malware, i suggest you download and run HiJackThis, post the log here and we'll check it over. Also, you should check all your windows system files by opening up a command prompt and typing "sfc.exe /scannow" (without the quotes), follow the instructions you get

dragon