xp pauses in many different situations, works fine otherwise

[Guest]

im running a dell p4 2.8 with 512 ram

windows xp pauses when i try to open a file,
especially text files or larger files and then they
open and run fine

it can pause from anywhere to 10 seconds to a minute or more
it also does this in some games, which is starting to get annoying

its getting progressively worse, as well
i've had this computer for less than a year

i have cleaned up startup, and run easyclean,
spybot, ad-aware, and i have norton systemworks 03

 

[Guest]

I would do this:

start button: run: type this: %temp%
delete everything in that folder
If i says it cannot delete any files that is ok.

I would check to see what my page file was set to:

Right click My Computer: Properties: Click the advanced tab:
In the Performance box click "Settings"
Then click on the "Advanced" Tab
At the bottom in the Virtual Memory box click on "change"
Select (if not already) the drive that contains your paging file
Check to see if there is a custom size entered.
MS ideal size for your page file is 1.5 times the size of your physical RAM.
Which would be ~768 for you. So you should see a number just lower than that
in initial size and just higher than that in maximum.

If this is the case I would just do this:

Click on the "System Managed Size" button. The you must click "Set" You will
receive a warning box and a screen telling you that you have to restart your
system to apply the changes.

Do just as i wrote and restart the system immediatley after clicking "ok" to
close out all the windows you had to open.

This lets the Operating system configure what the page file needs to be. It
may slow for a sec here and there so the OS can grow the file but i have not
had any complaints about this.

I have had success on many systems that range in age from a month to 2 years
old. It seems that something happens to the page file on them. They just
start running slow for no apparent reason. I am not sure what it may be, but
this has fixed many of them for me. When i could not find anything wrong with
them through the other channels...ie spyware/adware, startup, plenty of
memory, no unnecessary processes, No installation of new incompatible
soft/hardware.

This can cause major problems if you do not do this carefully!

Hope this helps!