My good old PC is running about half speed ever since I did a Windows update a few weeks ago. Takes forever to boot and all apps load very slowly. My HD is beating itself to death. I first thought virus/spyware, but I have all the usual spyware programs (which are up to date) and my anti-virus is current. They all indicate clean or cannot find a problem. So since this seemed to have started right after the update/patch process I am thinking that may have been the cause. Any thoughts? I really would like this to stop. Thanks.

Some of windows security upgrades will slow the machine down.

Try this: Go to the msconfig startup tab and deselect as many programs as you can. You probably need very few of them running all the time.

"I did a Windows update a few weeks ago." Was that performed on Microsoft's update site or from an 'unofficial' source? The unofficial sources have more bugs than they fix. Mainly they over-install newer .dll files with older ones. Bryan

Thanks for the replies. As to the update itself, it was from Microsoft. As to the config at startup. it's as pared down as I can get it. There are really no extraneous things running that I didn't have before, or probably could cut out (I have always kept this to a minimum anyway). Anyone know if there is a way to 'back off' an update? Unfortunately, I was foolish enough to not note exactly what got updated or patched, so it would be difficult to identify any 'pieces' to get rid of. There must be others out there with this issue.

Look on Window update page for your update history. Should tell you all that were performed and when.

If you are convinced it was a windows update that caused the problem, you could do a windows install on top. That should remove all updates.