My computer sucks!!
 

for the past 2 or so weeks my computer has been super slow. loading a website is slower than dialup and we have cable! everything goes really slow, even opening things in windows goes slow sometimes. what can i do to fix this?!? thanks!

What OS are you running? When you hit ctrl+alt+delete, how many programs are running?
What are your system specs? Processor and Ram specifically.

Are you on a network?

Are you running any P2P programs in the background? Is anyone on the network (if you have one) running P2P applications in the background?

Have you ran Ad-Aware and Spybot?

-Lasereth

If you don't have any background apps taking up the CPU, I would install another copy of Windows into a new partition. That'll tell you if it's software or hardware related.

You can use a disk partitioning tool or buy a cheap, second hard disk and swap it out.

Any other t-shooting tends to be futile and time consuming.

Just save your info and reload your system from scratch. Why troubleshoot and yeah you may find the problem but it may happen again and its most likely to much crap in the background or something got installed and its screwing stuff up.

to be honest im not really sure about all you guys are talking about... i guess im alright using computers but i dont know all the "technical" terms and about megabytes and ram and all that... i assume its a 'network' cuz i share the computer. each user has an account name, and it seems only under my name its going slow.
here is the info: dell dimenision 8200
intel
pentium 4 cpu 1.80GHz
512 mb of ram
windows xp

when i press ctrl alt delete right now there are 3 programs open: AOL, winamp, and internet explorer. i always have those 3 programs running. i have kazza lite on my computer, and soul seek, but they are closed and disconnected (no downloading or uploading).
i have a lot of music and some videos downloaded, but they have been on here for a while and just in the past 2 weeks the computer has gotten real slow. the other users do not download anything.

Install, update, and run AdAware (www.lavasoft.de). That might fix it.

Google SpyBot and download it, get the updates then run it and see what you have. As someone mentioned before though, sometimes the easiest thing is just to backup your important stuff and reinstall windows. Just cause Im a neat freak, I do this every other month or so, fresh hard drives are fun.

as the above two guys said adaware and spybot are the two must haves if you do any net use.

also hijack this is recommended

backup important personal files and run them in the mentioned order.

reboot between each programmes sweep.

dont get lazy with the reboots or one day youll pay for it.

ps dont use the restore for xp it usually gives problems of its own

most often simply resetting your modem should fix the issue of not getting advertised speed from your isp

kick it! works for me

if you have your windows cd i would reformat, i (try to) reformat every 6 months or so, it really helps. throw all important crap onto a seperate HD.

I would get linux.

Ya, linux, when he shares the computer...ya...
I'm with the linux crowd, but only for the people that WANT to learn, or have a need to learn.

thanks for all the help!! i will try some of your suggestions and look into it. im a bit warey though of messing up stuff worse though, since i share the computer with my family. im afraid ill mess up their stuff!