computer very slow

[bigdan]

Over the last few months my desktop computer's gotten much much slower. I'm not sure what's the cause but it hasn't always been like this. I notice with pictures in particular I really feel it. I recently uploaded some pictures to my laptop, which isnt as strong, and there was such a difference in speed!

I have no viruses or any of that, have made such of that. Can anyone advise as to potential issues?

FYI I'm running XP on a P4 2.66 GHz with 2 GB RAM.

Thanks
Dan

 

[MindoverMaster]

Have you ran any spyware checkers? malwarebytes, spybot search and destroy, ccleaner?

 

[bigdan]

CCleaner yes, the other 2 not in a few weeks. But this problem has been happening for months and I've ruled out the spyware portion. I even had a spyware specialist guiding me on a forum and he said whatever problem it is, its not spyware / virus related.

Just to clarify, the hardware specs I gave are sufficient for day to day browsing, watching movies, etc no?


I'm curious if this could be anything to do with graphics drivers or any of that stuff. I have no knowledge at all on that but I did notice when I plugged in a new much wider monitor I did feel a change in performance. Not sure if that was my imagination or not but its something to note.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Did you check your hard drive with diagnostics? Did you try Memtest yet?

 

[bigdan]

Did you check your hard drive with diagnostics? Did you try Memtest yet?

i did a defrag recently but besides that im not really sure what that stuff is. can you advise? either way the answer is no!

 

[MindoverMaster]

SeaTool, that was it. | Seagate

Works on any HDD.

The reason I suggested Memtest, is because, do you see all of your RAM? Or is it that processes steal your RAM?