I have gone through and defrag'd my computer, went through the disk cleanup, deleted a ton of music files I no longer needed and my computer still works pretty slow.

Pulling up my email in Outlook Express now takes over 5 minuetes sometimes. Starting my computer can take just as long.

What could be the problem? Do I need to add more RAM or whatever it's called? I have 65% of my hard drive free, so I know it's not that.

Any help would be appreciated!! Thx!

Which OS?

XP

Go HERE and follow the instructions on how to repair Internet Explorer and Outlook Express using the XP disk. I had to do it recently to my PC and it fixed it. vThis will force XP to overwrite any corrupted system files.

Thanks! I'll try that and see if it helps me too :D

Ok, I scanned that page quickly, and I don't want to have to reinstall XP (cuz I'd have to back up everything again, huh?). Were you able to do a repair and not lose any information?

I did not back up anything. What it does is check the system files on your PC against what's on the install disc and over-writes any thing that has been changed. You may have to re-install some driver's after (video, audio, etc.). I had to re-install my video drivers after. All my files and settings were un-touched.

ok, i'll give it a shot

More RAM might also help but this is also comming from a guy that has asked for computer help on the board many times before. lol

You usually have a lot of processes running that you don't need(adware, media agents, etc).From the task manager find out what processes you need(windows shell, system processes, video/audio drivers) and the ones you don't.They all consume resources, and usually don't all need to be running.Also remove apps from the startup folder that don't need to be ran on bootup.Try a program called MaxMem from www.AnalogX.com , this will flush the mem at certain intervals and helps alot, also various XP tweaks from downloads.com will help a ton.Adding extra ram wouldn't hurt , but I don't think it will help with apps such as Outlook.

And be sure your XP and drivers are up to date.

Jana what are you running for RAM? I just added 512K and it made a HUGE difference. An excellent program for removing spyware & adware is Spybot which can be found here: http://www.safer-networking.org/

This is not a simple RAM upgrade problem... Her computer was running fine before and just recently took a shit. That's Windows for ya... LightningGSX and Vicious have the right ideas, something is wrong with the operating system itself. If neither of these fixes work there's no other solution than to completely reinstall Windows.

I'm going to work on this over the weekend. Thanks for the help! I just reinstalled everything in August due to a virus. I really hate to have to do it again so soon, but maybe it's for the best.

Is it fixed yet Jana?

Fuck no. I am changin mail identities right now and it takes forever.

I didn't have time to try it this weekend. I had to work all day Saturday. I'll get to it here eventually.

http://www.unix-networking.com/Vicious/smiley_234.gif Is it fixed yet? http://www.unix-networking.com/Vicious/smiley_234.gif