Hi,
My laptop has really gone slow since last month or so, which so ever application I open, beit the media player, acrobat reader or mozilla firefox the CPU utilization would top to 100% and wudnt come down at all. I could watch movie in full screen before but now i cant play a mp3 song even.
I have tried many anti-virus softwares but the problem still persists.
Can any body please help me, please

Hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the Task Manager, look at the bottom/left...how many processes do you have running?

Now click on the Processes tab & click on 'User Name' on the top of the 2nd column. That will rearrange your processes. How many 'Image Names' do you have associated with your user name? For example, I have 10 Image Names with 'jam' next to them...I can identify all 10. Can you do the same?

Could be something installed in the last month, or could just be "one of those things".

If it's a software install of some kind, add/remove programs or system restore could fix it.

If not, back up your files, write down all your saved website passwords & back up your email & re-install XP. I seem to end up doing that every 6 months or so.

"...re-install XP. I seem to end up doing that every 6 months or so."

uh, probably not the best person to be taking advice from...lol

I second jam. I've yet to do xp reinstallation on all of the machines I serviced.

i_XpUser

Ops "all" should read "any"

i_XpUser

Thank alot for the quick responses.
I can certainly identify the processes.
I have tried formatting/reinstallation of my system partition but that did'nt bring and difference, I have not installed any big software on my system but still becomes so unbearably slow that i have to wait for a few seconds to see what i have just typed.
please help me

Run ccleaner to get rid of accumulated and unwanted files. Before running it uncheck anything that you don't want deleted.

http://www.ccleaner.com/

Then run regseeker to clean your registry

http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm

Finally defragment your disk.
Double click My Computer, right click C Drive, click Properties, Tools tab, Defragment Now, Defragment. When finished reboot and see if your problem has been resolved.

Thanks alot,
the registry cleaning really did the trick, i had been thinking all the time that my computer was infected by a virus but it was rubish registry enteries dragging it down.
Thanks indeed

"I have tried formatting/reinstallation of my system partition but that did'nt bring and difference"

"i had been thinking all the time that my computer was infected by a virus but it was rubish registry enteries dragging it down."

I don't see how a drive that has just been formatted & XP reinstalled would have accumulated a large amount of "rubish registry enteries"