Laptop very slow at start-up

[Guest]

I have a Dell laptop - 1 year old.
2.4 gig
384 meg RAM
windows XP Home Edition
installed SP2 (or most current available)
Aw-Aware - most current version available
Spy-Bot - most current available download
Norton anti virus 2004 - recently run full system system scan
recently de-fragged hard drive
used IE tools to delete cookies, temp internet files & recently visited
sites -- do this often
use Windows "system tools" to clean files

This laptop takes about 8 - 10 minutes to boot-up to a place that I can use
it & after boot-up the computer is very slow to run any-all tasks .... very
frustrating

The computer has not always been so slow -- started about the time I
installed SP2
At the control-alt-delete command - "processes" shows high 50's low 60's
as the number of processes running -- only the "system idle process"
indicates signifigant CPU time (17 hours, 23 minutes 44 seconds - I do not
know what this really means)
Very frustrating ... I need help!!! Am considering reformatting hard
drive but I really do not want to do that if I can help it.

Tommg3999

 

[Ted Zieglar]

This is most likely spyware.

Some tips:

1. Having the most current version of the software won't be of help unless
you keep it up to date. Antivirus and antispyware applications receive
updates several times a week.

2. To be of value, antivirus and antispyware applications need to start with
Windows and stay running in the background.

3. Spyware is notoriously elusive: It often takes scanning with more than
one spyware detector and sometimes three of four in order to detect the
presence of spyware.

4. Attempting to remove viruses and spyware 'on your own' is rarely
successful and only makes it more difficult for them to be detected by
software.

5. No software of any kind will be of value if one doesn't follow safe
computing practices.

Ted Zieglar