Ok, I'm having some trouble. I've looked through alot of places and have tried to correct the issue. Let me tell you what I've done so far:
1) I do have a GeForce4 PCI card with the latest drivers
2) Recently (last day or 2) a lot of app. are running very slow
3) At about the same time I installed directx 9.0 without creating the system restore : (
4) So far, I have used msconfig and gotten rid of most unneeded things. I have used spybot to remove other things.
5) I think it is still a memory problem because I only have about 79% free on startup (which is ok), BUT when I start running small application(s) the system resources drops down fast!

Please Help! I think it may have been the directx 9.0 that got me. Is there anything I can do about it? I don't have a system restore (I = stupid)

Many Thanks