My computer has been running slow lately and freezes up a lot when trying to open programs. I thought this may be caused by a virus, so i ran my Mcaffe scanner (it is updated). It was unable to find anything, so I moved on to the Panda online scanner, and still found nothing. I decided there may be errors on the hard drive so I ran the check for errors program. It made me restart, and when I did XP said "cannot open colume for direct access". It was not able to check if the drive did have any errors. I do not have many more ideas, and would prefer not to format the hard drive unless that is the only choice. Anybody ever been in this situation, or have any tips that might be helpful? Thanks for any help!

One possibility. Do you have a Pentium processor. Pentiums have a feature that slows them down if they get too hot. If your computer is in a warmer environment than it was when it was running OK, that could be the problem. It's likely something else, however.

I do have a pentium, but it is running around 37C. It will stay at 100% in the task manager when it is running slow, but no processes are shown to be using the processor.

If it's running that cool it isn't stepping down.