Its all gone slow!

[julianhj]

My machine seems to have gone on strike - any task seems to take forever - it freezes when I type, switch between different windows, moce the cursor - any and every operationtakes condsiderably longer than it should...

anyone got any idea what is wrong? Virus maybe? Some settings gone haywire? I've not changed/installed/downloaded anything recently.

TIA

Julian

[meeja]

If not viral, overheating maybe?

If the fan on your processor has packed up, it will overheat very quickly, and these are symptoms that will appear in an overheating PC

[ek993]

Make sure your virus definitions are up to date and do a full system scan. Also download Spybot, make sure its updated with the latest definitions once installed, and run a scan. Had to sort out a machine a coupke of weeks back that was exhibiting similar symptoms as you describe (takes an age to do anything - launch windows explorer / ie / opening web pages etc etc etc). Found a gazillion spyware / adware etc files, once deleted and rebooted all was OK

[julianhj]

already have Spybot in place - can you recommend a free/trial virus checker? I don't have one atm! Am running zone alarm though.

[gopher]

grisoft produce a very capable virus checker which is free for personal use, I have used it for the last 2 years and have not had a virus since (have had a number caught however).

See here

www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php

[julianhj]

OK - fans all seem to be fine, processor is not hot to the touch.

Tried to install Grisoft's AVG only to be told it's 'not a valid Win32 application'.

Hard drive is constantly active. Zone Alarm no longer loads automatically on start up.

I'm going to format the drive and reinstall all the stuff I regularly use.. If that doesn't work, it's going on the bonfire and I'm heading for Dell's website...

[outlaw]

sounds like the hard drive is badly fragmentated.

defrag it.
or posible the drives controler is starting to fail.