my computer is messed up. it worked fine when we bought it but now it has gotten really messed up. the main problems are that it has slowed down (in the way that games worked fine a few months ago but now are freezing up/really slow) and the alt+ctrl+delete task manager dissapears right after it is brought up, or doesnt appear at all. we've run programs such as ad-away and spy-bot to try and get rid of stuff but it still is slow. is this the work of viruses or bugs? the computer is not very old. can someone help me?

Try Defraging your HDD, Goto Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, then Disk Defragmenter. If you haven't done this then it will take some time. Hope this helps The world is full of willing people, some are willing to work, others are willing to let them; just a thought!

Go to trendmicro.com and run housecall. Install an antivirus program and firewall. Install spywareblaster and keep it updated. Please post back within 24 hours or I will delete the post from my follow up list. Thanks. It would be a courtesy if you would post back and let us know if the fix worked or not.

If a virus is killing Task Manager, you can usually get around it by copying the file somewhere else, renaming it, then manually launching it from the new location (you can find it as taskmgr.exe in the windows\system32 or winnt\system32 directory). You'll still need to do the virus scans, but if the virus causes trouble with them, it would help to be able to get task manager running first so you can kill it. From your symptoms, you should be looking for something under the processes tab with a high CPU usage.

I'm wondering if the fact that he is running minimum RAM requirement for XP could be part of the problem. Maybe would run good at first, but after loading several applications, wouldn't that cause problems? I am the Human!!