Hi everyone: I started to notice that my PC is getting slower with time. I am not installing any new software, I haven't done that for months. The signs are: 1. When I open a folder with many icons, like My Documents, for example, and scroll it down the computer freezes for a second or so, then it takes a while for it to update all the icons. It wasn't like that before. 2. I usually play music with Media Player on the background, but now I noticed that every time I do something with a file (copy it, run it, or save it) the sound starts skipping and looping on the same spot for maybe a couple of seconds. Can someone tell me what's going on?

Infection, viruses, malware, spyware, processes loading at startup, excess internet garbage/temp files, in need of defrag, etc. In other words, you need to catch up on your system housecleaning.

Most Virus and Spyware scans are likely to work better in Windows Safe-Mode. You can do Start, then RUN, then type msconfig Then uncheck items in the Startup tab. To find out what each Startup(or Process) item does or means, and any recommendation as to if you should close the process: http://www.answersthatwork.com/Task... Task List Programs OR http://www.processlibrary.com/ The Process Library -------------------------- http://support.microsoft.com/defaul... Computer Speed and Performance May Decrease When you open, then close programs, programs may not free up RAM memory. That is called "Memory Leak". Restarting computer will clear out its RAM memory.

download ccleaner (free program that gets rid of junk files)

Thank you guys for your replies. I do run an anti-virus program that updates itself every day and seems to catch all the tracking cookies and the like crap if I browse Internet. The Windows updates are set up to automatic as well. I checked the start up items in msconfig and all it had were nvidia drivers, a mouse driver, sound card driver, and an entry for the anti-virus program. I do not have any crapware bars installed in my web browser and I set up both IE and firefox to clean the browsing cache every time I close them. I also tried checking the running processes through the web site given above and couldn't find anything suspicious. Well the only weird stuff is this svchost.exe repeating itself several time. I tried ending it but it didn't let me. Could that be the way virus masked itself? Overall, I think I have a clean system but that still doesn't help to make it run as smooth as it used to.