Increasingly slow performance

[Guest]

My computer seems to be running slower and slower over time. There is an
increasingly long period of time when I execute a task and when the task
actually is performed. It seems like every switch between programs results
in a long period of time where the hard disk is being accessed, and/or high
processor usage.

I frequently have opened in five or six programs that I switch between such
as Internet Explorer, MS Word, MS Outlook, Adobe Acrobat, power desk, etc.
in the past, running these combination of programs has been no problem. It
seems, however, the problem is progressively getting worse.

I have performed all the routine maintenance tasks such as the cleaning out
temporary files, cleaning out advertising files, checking for viruses etc. I
have used the following programs to help cleanup/diagnose my computer:
AdAware 6.0
Norton Anti-Virus
Registry Mechanic
JV16 Power Tools
Spybot
MS Disk Defragmenter

All of these programs have run been run multiple times over the last few
weeks, and performed their cleaning tasks and reported a clean bill of health
when run a second, third, fourth,... time. In addition, I have reduced the
background tasks to a minimal amount. I have also changed the page file size
a number of times, including automatic setting, with no perceptible change in
performance.
My current configuration is as follows, Windows 2000 OS (version 5, SP 4),
256MB RAM, 400MB Page file size, Pentium 4 processor in an IBM T30 laptop.

Help?
What can I try next?

 

[Jud]

My computer seems to be running slower and slower over time.
Help?
What can I try next?

I to find that mine tends to do the same thing, especially if the PC is left
running with Bit Torrent or Kazaa, for any extended period, say 36 hours or
so, If i do a quick reboot then everything is Ok for a while, I keep saying
I should upgrade my Memory from 256 to 512 but never seem to get round to
it, oh well lets see what Santa brings.

Jud

 

[Guest]

Rebooting does not seem to make a lot of difference, once I get eveything
opened back up the performance is the same.

 

[John John]

You seem to be keeping the laptop well maintained so it might be
difficult to find a particular cause for the slow performance. I would
try defragmenting the pagefile and system files and see if things
improve. You can use PageDefrag by Sysinternals:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pagedefrag.shtml

You could also compact the registry with NTRegopt:
http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/

John