Why is my computer so slow?!?!?

[Phil]

I've tried just about everything. It's not been slow forever, it only started about a month ago.

-Pentium 4 - 2.53GHZ
- 27Gb FREE of 37Gb
-512MB RAM

Diskeeper completed it's defrag for the 3rd time in 2 weeks about 5 minutes ago and it hasn't made any difference to the speed. Everything I use just seems to be delayed and a bit choppy. I've used Registry Mechanic to clean the registry up, I've used Adaware and Spy Doctor to sort that lot out. I have AVAST Antivirus to deal with viruses, I don't know what else to try, it's not like I'm anywhere close to using my hard drive space up. I never normally have anymore than 3 applications running at anyone time, but regardless of that, everything is slow when there are no applications running, ie. shutting down takes about 1 minute.

I don't really know what to do because it's becoming frustrating now and I can't afford to be buying a replacement laptop, especially when the spec of this one is nothing to be ashamed of.

Any help would be appreciated including suggestions of programs that might speed me up.

Thanks.

[Win2Win]

Use MSCONFIG to switch off any crap at boot up.

You can also register a new user, and see if it works quicker with that, then you know it software on the other username.

Did you defrag the page file with Diskeeper?

[Phil]

What's page file and is that something I should be defragging? I haven't changed any of the options.

I don't know what half the programs that run on startup are, I've turned off the ones I don't need that I actually know of but most of them I've never heard of.

[Kaizer54]

have you tried system restore in your help centre? set the date a month back and it will undo any changes that's been made, just make sure you go back far enough with your date.... you can always undo it and try another date if that does'nt work......good luck!

[e55exboi]

Try BC Wipe from www.jetico.com Not sure if it speeds things up but it's very useful anyway. Depending on how you set things up it can take 3 or 4 days for a full sortout :yikes: :yikes:

[Win2Win]

Blimey, don't RESTORE unless you have a 'orrible problem.

In Diskeeper it says "Change Settings", their is an option to defrag the page file on boot up. It can take a while though, so do it over night, but you can stop it and continue the next night.

The more software you have loaded, the slower the system gets. It isn't a bad idea to do a clean install every 12 months. If you have two HD's you can run two OS, and slowly transfer over.