I have recently noticed that my computer seems to take much, much longer to boot, open programs and switch between programs that it did before. I replaced my power supply this week as my 3.3V reading was well over 4.0V, but it didn't seem to help the slow down problem at all. I especially notice it when I am booting and the black screen is on with the blue bar moving at the bottom - it takes forever to move to the login screen. One other thing is that my hard drive seems to make more noise than before as well. I am considering formatting and re-installing if no one can suggest some other course of action. Specs - comp was new in February. AMD XP 1800+ soltek purple ray m/b 256 mb DDR ATI 64MB DDR video 60 gig maxtor hd

May be a stupid question but have you defragged recently? Niteflyer

yea dude.....defrag that dino...dosen't take a rocket scientist to figure that out

Yeah OK! You never mentioned it and I was only trying to help, I guess I'll keep my otehr suggestions to myself and go to another post then!

Go to start / run / type in msconfig----and OK. then the System configuration Utility will open. Startup Tab--all entries are from other applications(only msmsgs.exe is WinXP). Turn any or all off (antivirus and firewall may need to make the cut). Watch your boot-up and performance soar. These are all running in the background, stealing system resources. Only add back what you need. Any will open when needed. Good luck

I have notice if you install Virus Scan like Norton Antivirus 2002 on your system it will slow you down a bit coz they gotta scan in the begining... ~BeBe~

i got the nav corporate edition...i set it to not only scan on execution of files, but also creation of files, transfer of files, etc...and not just a simple scan...but the hardest heurestic possible. i hardly notice any difference...stuff pop open instantly although i have noticed a longer boot time. i reinstalled intel's application accelerator. only difference that i notice is that now in the device manager, XP's driver has been replaced by the application accelerator (for some reason, before i reinstalled, windows xp handled it, even though application accelerator was running( whereas it used to only take 3 seconds, it now takes 10 seconds to pass the black screen with the blue moving bar. so i think maybe the same thing (driver issue) is the same for you. as for the hard drive sound....a program might have used the hard drive's SMART to change from quiet to high performance. hard drives can be controlled to balance sound and performance. mine is already quiet at max performance...so i keep it there