Hi, I work one night, all is ok. Turn on the computer the next day, it takes 20 - 30 minutes to boot. Once booted it is still very very slow. CPU consumation is normal, very low. The hard drive seems to work very very slow. Starting programs, redrawing windows, everything takes forever. I am simply not able to work with the comp in this way. I did, through, kaspersky and other softwares, virus/malware/spyware scanning, nothing. I did defragmenting, still the same. Did a memtest and removed memory sticks that had non acceptable errors. Two memory sticks remains that passed the memtest. I used diagnostics tool from my hardware vendor (WD) all seems ok. I ran chkdsk /f, all fine. Bios is the latest, however still kinda old. But I don't think that is the problem. This is like over a night and suddenly everything became sluggish. I don't know what to do, please, I would be grateful for any advice. Thanks Pierre

Pierre, You more than likely have spyware. Start your system in Safe Mode. Open the Task Manager and see if any rougue programs are running. Download SpyBot S&D and AdAwareSE. Run them both. Together they should catch majority of spyware on system. HiJack This! is also another good program to download and run. Check you System startup in MSConfig and look for strange programs starting. Check your Run parameters in RegEdit. Look, using Windows Explorer, for rougue programs in Windows and Windows\System32 directories and delete them. If no spyware is found and your system, you might want to check your BIOS settings to see if you have the processor to run under "Compatible" mode. This will degrade your system performance noticeably. Why it is even on there, no one will ever know. Good Luck, Scootr

Thank you very much Scootr. I will try everything you suggested. Most of them I have already done. I haven't try deleting rouge programs in /system32 though and I haven't checked the processor in the BIOS, will do that now... again, thanks...will let you know what happen...

Hi again, I have went through the safe mode and scanning of spyware with SpyBot, adware and more..., removed almost everything that could be suspicious from startup in msconfig (now only 2 trusted program starts), did the Hijack this. Did some cleaning in system 32 (it's hard to know exactly what to touch in there). The run parameters in regedit didn't contain anything suspicious. Did a BIOS check to make certain the cpu weren't set in compatible mode. The system is somewhat better but still sluggis. I think the hard disk is ok. I am still suspecting the memory modules. I did another memory scan and I have now thre RAM sticks inside. 2 512 and one 256. The 256 passed without any error. Each of the 512 had one adress causing some errors, 2 and 11 respectively. The third 512 DDR RAM was bad and is not used. I had to leave them in til my new RAM arrives. I am thinking 2 512 that each had a bad adress are causing the hard drive to work slower and the system in general is sluggish. If that is the case I see no point in making a format c: However if there indeed are some virus/spyware (that escaped the scanning) causing the system to be sluggish then I wouldn't hesitate format the whole drive. As of now, I am clueless...in the meantime I am trying and waiting for my new RAM...

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