My computer has pretty much come to a halt. It was always slightly slow, but within the last couple of months it’s gotten much worse, and within in the last week it now literally takes 3 - 10 minutes to open a program, an email, a document, send or receive an email, just about everything. Here's a list of the symptoms: - The aforementioned slow - Won't open Explorer on the first click, sometimes not even on the second or third. I know I'm not just rushing it, because once Explorer does open, it does not open multiple windows. - When I try to Restart or Shut Down from the start menu, and I have had Explorer open, it gives me an error message that says "iexplore.exe - This program is not responding" - I've already closed all programs - "Hit cancel to return, or end task..." blah blah, you know the one. - Sometimes I get the same message in the same situation above but the program that is not responding is "ccApp.exe". Then it goes to "iexplore.exe" - When this happens, I have repeatedly hit End Task, the message comes back over and over again. I have allowed it to work on ending the task for literally hours, and eventually the only way I can shut down is to actually pull the cord out of the power strip. Even the off button will not turn off the computer. What we have tried to correct it: - Ran Defrag - Ran Scan disk - Removed all unnessary programs - Checked on space used and I’m only using like 10G out of 80 on the harddrive - Run diagnostic tests from the Dell manual, the Express Test and the Symptom Tree, both which logged “pass” on each item, except something called IDE Device failed, but it just wanted the Resource Disk put in, once I did that it was fine, so I don’t think that means anything. - Did a System Restore back to August 05, which has definitely improved the speed, but still received the "ccApp program not responding" message upon logging out, and I'm concerned it's just a matter of time before whatever is actually wrong has me back to a complete crawl. I have Norton Antivirus and it updates regularly. Does anyone have any other suggestions of what could be the problem and how I can fix it?

Running defrag is good when you're having poor response time problem due to bad fragmentations wherein the disk arm moves all over the place to retrieve sectors scattered everywhere all around the disk. So that's out of the way. You can try the "process of elimination route" in your problem investigation. First off, try using another browser like Firefox, Opera or Netscape, etc. If any of these browsers work, then you can point your finger at IE. You may wanna consider downloading the latest IE release/version and patches from Microsoft. (I rarely use IE if at all,.. very problematic and hacker's favorite target imo. ) Also consider downloading and running Adaware and Spybot for good measure. HTH

Well sorry to tell you but i think you are going to have to do a clean-reainstall of windows, its recommended to do one a least once a year i asure you that thats going to solve the problem and you will notice a 100% increase in speed go there to for instructions on doing a clean reinstall http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/clean1.html also before you do this is a good idea to make sure spyware has not taken over your computer so run a couple of scans with spyware programs like - ad-aware - spybo search and destroy both are free write back if you have any questions

Have you run IE Repair? DerekW

I'm not quite sure what IE Repair is, so I'm pretty sure I've not done it yet, Derek. Thanks for the responses, and kept giving me hints and suggestions, I will have time again next weekend to start trying them out.

This is what MS say about IE Repair in XP (about 1/3 to 1/2 way down page): MS Q318378 In summary you type sfc /scannow in the Run box then hit Return. DerekW