networked computers started running slow

[Guest]

my brother has recently networked his computer to mine (both windows xp), mine being the host. i have networked computers to mine before and everything has been fine. all was fine for a couple of weeks, then, after about an hour of being online, both computers start running incredibly slow, almost grind to a complete stop. i haven't installed any new programs, and all he has installed is a game (from disc) which we have uninstalled to see if that was the problem, and it isn't. updated versions of adaware, spybot search and destroy, cw shredder, cleansweep norton etc have been used on both computers. i have noticed that on my task manager there seems to be a hell of a lot of processes running in the background, cpu usage keeps jumping up as high as 90% or so, and the pf usage seems to be around 352MB. i have a 1.8GHz processor and 256 MB of ram (i've had this computer for a while) i have absolutely no idea what these mean, i'm just posting them because after reading through a few threads to try and sort this out, these are generally the things that are asked! a friend seems to think that more ram is the only option? is this right? i don't want to go out and use what little money i have buying it if it's not going to fix the problem. obviously if it will fix it, i will buy it.

thank you in advance for any help offered.

 

[Ed]

Are you running a firewall on both computers? How about a virus program? I
suggest running spyware programs, like Ad-aware.

my brother has recently networked his computer to mine (both windows xp),

mine being the host. i have networked computers to mine before and
everything has been fine. all was fine for a couple of weeks, then, after
about an hour of being online, both computers start running incredibly slow,
almost grind to a complete stop. i haven't installed any new programs, and
all he has installed is a game (from disc) which we have uninstalled to see
if that was the problem, and it isn't. updated versions of adaware, spybot
search and destroy, cw shredder, cleansweep norton etc have been used on
both computers. i have noticed that on my task manager there seems to be a
hell of a lot of processes running in the background, cpu usage keeps
jumping up as high as 90% or so, and the pf usage seems to be around 352MB.
i have a 1.8GHz processor and 256 MB of ram (i've had this computer for a
while) i have absolutely no idea what these mean, i'm just posting them
because after reading through a few threads to try and sort this out, these
are generally the things that are asked! a friend seems to think that more
ram is the only option? is this right? i don't want to go out and use what
little money i have buying it if it's not going to fix the problem.
obviously if it will fix it, i will buy it.

 

[Guest]

yes, both computers are firewalled and virus protected. i have already raun adaware, spybot search and destroy and hijackthis. that was the first thing i thought of, but it hasn't helped. thanks for the suggestion though.