PC Grinding to a Halt

[Nick]

My PC has become so slow recently and i dont know why? I
have just had a memory from 128mg to over 400mg and all
the memory still seems to be being used. There are 40
processes being shown as running if i press ctrl, alt,
delete most of which i dont know what they are. So many
programs start up when i boot up the pc and i dont know
how to stop them. looking for some advice on how to
correct all this and hopefull speed my pc up a bit

 

[Chuck]

My PC has become so slow recently and i dont know why? I
have just had a memory from 128mg to over 400mg and all
the memory still seems to be being used. There are 40
processes being shown as running if i press ctrl, alt,
delete most of which i dont know what they are. So many
programs start up when i boot up the pc and i dont know
how to stop them. looking for some advice on how to
correct all this and hopefull speed my pc up a bit

Nick,

To find out what these process are, get Process Explorer from
http://www.sysinternals.com (free). You can look at a process, get a
list of all the modules it uses, and see who manufactured those
modules. Much better than Task Manager.

To examine the startup programs, looking in all 5 of the startup lists
(and add / remove from the lists), get Startup Control Panel. To
control what gets added to these 5 lists, when software is installed,
get Startup Monitor. Both programs are free from Mike Lin at
http://www.mlin.net/.

Please start with a malware check. Get Spybot S&D and HijackThis,
both free. Start here:
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?showtopic=5187.

Cheers,

Chuck
I hate spam - PLEASE get rid of the spam before emailing me!
Paranoia comes from experience - and is not necessarily a bad thing.