Hello, When I make any action "like changing a web page" my computer slows down and in my Windows task manager it shows that my CPU usage history spike all the way to the top. I haven't added anything new to my computer lately and in fact I have gotten rid of a few things to try to speed it up. I do keep a lot of pictures on here (about 3000),and a few short videos and I believe they have been duplicated through out time since I have been using photo-smart premier. Anyway my computers a mess, and I would like to know if I should be setting up a bunch of recovery disks, or do I put the pictures on their own disks manually, and then delete all of the pictures and videos? Maybe that isn't the problem, is there a way I can get a diagnostic through PC doctor 5 for windows? If it would help I can send info about my physical memory and commit charge and kernel memory.

For photos I would suggest loading them to photobucket so they can easily be accessed but don't take up space on your computer. If you are have cpu usage spikes, I would suggest going to your task manager and going to processes. If there are things there that seem shady and you are sure you don't need, end the process and see if that helps. You should definitely do a virus/spyware scan though, I'm not sure about PC doctor 5, I have no experience with that. You may want to consult a computer expert to clean out any bad programs or viruses, and then definitely defrag and reorganize your PC. Also if you have problems mainly with when you're loading websites and stuff, you may want to delete and reinstall your browser. Make sure to save all your favorite links somewhere so you don't lose them. Hope this helps! Good luck, I hate when my computer acts dumb. XD

Good advice from Charlotte, first thing I would do is a virus/spyware scan. There's a goof freeo nline sscan from Trend Micro at TrendSecure | TrendSecure (http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/) and just click on the Housecall Free Scan.

As for the pictures/videos, how full is your hard drive? It shouldn't really matter how many are on there as long as the drive isn't getting full. Have you tried defragmenting? That can speed things up, too.

Time to do some serious maintenance on your machine:

Here's my usual C&P for cases like this:


When was the last time you did some serious maintenance on your system ?

System maintenance includes:
Defrag
FULL patching
Virus scanning
Spyware scanning
removal of rubish files

Defrag is an inbuilt function in XP.
Open My Computer > Right click C: > Tools Tab and its there.

To make sure everything is running fine run both anti virus and anti spyware apps in normal AND safe modes. (make sure that they are updated first ! ;)) (AVG (http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1) is good and free AV)
(A couple of good removal tools are Spybot (http://www.safer-networking.org/) and Adaware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/))

ALso an on line virus and spyware scanner is Trend Housecall (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/)

Just a note: actively running two AV's on one machine can cause problems.
So if you are thinking about it make sure your current one is disabled first.
Same thing applies to online scanners as well.

Removal of junk files is easy with CCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com) a free app that does exactly what

If all this fails then a repair install may be in order:

Here's (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/doug92.mspx) the official Micro$oft way of doing it,
and Here's (http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=138) one with screen shots.

Basically this installs windows over the top of your current setup.
So you don't loose any information you already have.

This lot should resolve your issue.

Edit---
You know what? I just doublechecked. You were right. I've got the old link. Damn.
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CB: Your link to housecall is the old one. The new version is TrendSecure | HouseCall™ Free Scan (http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/tools/security_tools/housecall) although I usually link to the portal page in case they decide to change it again. I wish they made the old link go to the new page...