I don't know what is happening to my computer. I have an HP with Windows XP. It has begun to run so slow and sluggish that I am ready to toss it.I've defragged, ran disk cleanup, ran Malwarebytes and even Ad Aware. I cannot get it to run work a darn.Can someone help me? Where do I turn and what do I look for? I can't afford to take it to a professional to fix it.THANKS!Barb1 person needs an answerI do too

What is the model and model number of your HP PC? Do you have XP Home or Pro or MCE? What SP level are you at? Have you installed the most up-to-date XP security patches? What security programs other than MBAM and AdAware (e.g., antivirus, other antimalware, firewall, etc.) do you run? Are they up-to-date? (Note:AdAware has been known to slow down a PC's performance, depending on how it's configured.) How much RAM do you have? How large is your hard drive and how much free space does it have? When did the sluggishness begin. Are you able to remember what you did to your PC right before the problem started (installation of a particular program or update or some suspicious behavior after visiting a compromised website)?Here are the usual causes of sluggishness:1. Malicious software (malware). You need to rule this out first! This page has excellent information:http://web.archive.org/web/20080610163247/http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware2. Certain programs that are designed to combat malware (e.g., Norton and McAfee). Ironically, they can slow things down because they simply use way too many resources. Sometime they cause conflicts with other programs. And their default mode is to scan your entire hard drive each time you boot up. Fortunately, there are other antimalware programs available that use far fewer resources (e.g., NOD32, Avast, and Avira).3. Too many of certain types of programs always running in the background -- with or without your knowledge. (Then again, many programs that run in the background have trivial consequences.)To determine every program and process you are currently running, use the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Processes tab. You should be able to sort by CPU usage or Memory usage to get a good ideas which ones are the resource/memory hogs. You should write down the names of all the processes for future detective work (or take a snapshot and print it out).Use these sites to determine what these programs are and to learn how to configure them not to always run at startup:http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php#THE_PROGRAMShttp://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htmSometimes it is recommended to use msconfig to configure the programs to not run at startup. A better, more thorough program is Autoruns:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspxBut before you do this, you should use the preference settings of the program in question. Otherwise, for some programs, they will return to the startup list anyway!If you do wish to use msconfig, it may be accessed this way:Start | Run | type "msconfig" (without the quotation marks) | Enter (or OK)4. Not enough RAM, which causes the PC to overly rely on the pagefile. A quick way to determine if this is happening is to open Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then note the three values under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit, and Peak.The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory you used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value of Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM. In case you want to explore this further, you may run Page File Monitor for Windows XP:http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm5. You might also want to check that your hard drive's access mode didn't change from DMA to PIO:http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/is-your-hard-disk-cddvd-drives-too-slow-while-copying/andhttp://winhlp.com/node/10