For some reason my computer has become really slow over the last week or so. It seems to be taking for ever to open programs, load web pages etc; The hard disk drive still has 18gig free our of 55gig and I haven't put anthing new in the way of programs on lately. Does anyone know what the problem could be?

I thought it was AVG virus protection so I deleted it but it's still dragging when loading things. Any help would be apreciated.....

Download 2 programs,

"adaware personal" and "Spybot search and destroy"

Also run a disk defrag and tell me what they results are :)

Thanks.

I'm rubbish with computers by the way - how do I run a disk de-frag?

Click on Start > Programs > Accessories> System tools > Disk Defragment... Let it run over night as it might take a while.

I was going to say exactly what he said. Also do a virus scan if (which I hope you do, lol) have a virus scanner. If any viruses/spyware can not be removed. Tell us and I'm sure somebody will help you or point u in the correct direction.

The above is correct theres a better than average chance that you have spyware but also consider which background programs are running, these are just as likely ,if not more so, to be the problem.

Look here and report back what you find when you follow the instructions. http://netsquirrel.com/msconfig/msconfig_xp.html

Defragment drive: its under system tools on the start/accessories menu. While you're at it run a scandisk.

personally i normally offer advice bu in your case i think that on occassion it would be handy for your pc to be down!

why is that then katcha?

Thanks for the help everyone, Mr I's technique of disabling the background programs got the computer working as good as new, I'm sure Katcha is over the moon....

Thanks again....

AVG (Grisoft) is very good for anti-virus and is free.

Adaware (Lavasoft) is also free and does much the same as Spybot etc.

If you want a free firewall then Zone Alarm (Zone Labs) is the best.

You shouldn't need anything other than these.

Are you running Vista or XP?

If you run Vista, then sometimes the indexing needs turning off as the PC overloads itself. More info is http://4sysops.com/?p=457

Another top tip is to stop surfing the pron websites! Lol

ADG,

It used to be free.. I was unaware they now charge!!

I used to have Zone Alarm but it seemed to interfere with my connection too much, instead my brother got me a copy of Keiro which is spot on

Have to agree about AVG and Ad Aware both are excellent especially as they cost nowt

if that program finds X amount of problems do you just let it fix em??

Yea you will be ok salty, or you can do it 1 by 1 and pick what to fix.

if you're not sure what any process is google it before disabling it.

I bit the bullet and downloaded MacAfee Internet Suite (cost me £30) but the first thing I've noticed is I no longer get I.E. pop-ups every five seconds (even though I use Firefox as my browser, I.E. pop-ups kept appearing at infuriating frequency, ironically to advertise anti-spyware ). I had avg free version, but it couldn't seem to cope, despite frequent updates. I've still kept a couple of other programmes on such the personal edition of Ad Aware and StopZilla, but I shouldn't have to run them now (plus AVG had to go as there was a conflict between it and the new MacAfee programme).