We purchased a work computer from a friend's girlfriend, and it's beyond slow. Come to find out she was big into downloading music, looking at porn... pretty much whatever you can do to slow down your computer *lol*

Before I made a few feeble attempts at cleaning it up, it would literally take a minimum of 5 minutes for 1 webpage to load. I listed below what I've done already, but I'm wondering if there's more I can do. I'm somewhat computer literate but not that much! :)

Installed anti-virus software.
Ran Windows Microsoft Update.
Defragmented; not sure if that made a difference
Ran Ad-Aware and Spyware Blaster
Deleted a bunch of files(music files; over 500 high-res pictures)
Ran Eusing Free Registry Cleaner(this really seemed to help. It found over 1,500 invalid entries and once I cleaned those up, it sped up quite a bit but is still on the slow side)
Emptied cookies, temp files, etc.

I use the same Internet connection at home and at work, but the work computer takes twice as long on any given day. Can someone help me before I throw this thing out the window? :p

Have you tried system restpre to factory setting? Of course that might mean you'd lose all the nonfactory additions... just a thought... I only seem to know enough to get me into trouble on my computer...

Go to the Control Panel and select User Accounts. Add another user to the PC. Logoff and logon as the new user. Then test your web browsing and other applications. It is likely that what ever is slowing down your computer is limited to the user profile.

If this is the case, then you can transfer the files from one profile to the other without getting the settings that messed things up.

Tried it; no difference. I probably should have mentioned that it's not just the Internet, it's programs too. I try to open WordPerfect and it takes at least 20 seconds after I click "open" for it to actually open.

Are there any other programs I can run to try and rectify this problem?

Do a Ctrl-Alt-Del and select Task Manager. Click on Processes tab and click on the CPU column to sort by CPU usage. System Idle Process should be the one at the top of the list with about 95-97 percent if all is OK. Is this the case? If not, what processes are taking lots of CPU? Write down the image name and then highlight it and select End Process. Reply with the image name.

Also, sort by the Mem Usage column and see which processes are taking the most memory and how much. Are there any that are using high amounts? More than 80,000 to 100,000 K?

Close the Task Manager and right-click on My Computer and select Manage. Open the Event Viewer. Look at the System log and the Application log. Are there any critical errors that are repeating.

Scroll down in the System log until you see three in a row - eventlogs in the Source column. This is your last reboot of the PC. Then move back up from there to see the pattern it takes after your reboot. Look for the critical and warning messages (red circles and yellow triangles). What are Source names and Event ID numbers?

My advice, save all stuff to an removable USB drive and then format the disk, reinstall Windows XP, voilà, you get fast speed for 2 H of work.

Littlebear, my thoughts exactly.
Back up and rebuild from scratch.
Adding more RAM is always a good idea as well.
XP runs well with 1Gig or more installed.

Open the case and see what brand of Hard Drive is in there. Locate MFG and download their free utilities program and format the hard drive and start fresh and new. Anything less is a waste of time, because many nasties are so deep rooted, you can never get rid of them all. After formatting the hard drive, reinstall the operating system and your computer will run like a champ.

Errrm, BGH, there is no need to crack the case and look at the drive as part of the XP install routine is a FORMAT of the drive.

CPU usage is normal; no processes seem to be overloading the system

Most recent errors in the system log:
02/08/2008
Source name: sr
Source event: 1

I wanted to post to this question earlier -- got side tracked

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Event ID: 1
Source: sr
This error event indicates that a previous System Restore has failed. It is likely caused by bad sectors on the hard drive or corruption in the system registry. The best way to get around this issue is what others have already suggested:

Recover your data to a CD or other type of storage, format the drive, reinstall the OS from scratch and start over.

Reinstalling the OS is simple but gathering up all those drivers, programs and downloads, reinstalling and getting your settings back the way you like it can take some time. I am not one to ever suggest starting over as a first solution. My personal preference is to try and fix the problem first. There does come a point where you have diminishing returns. Your time is worth something so sometimes it is better to "cut and run".

Make sure you download your drivers and have those handy before proceeding.

Refort the Hard Drive and be done with it. That is the fastest and easiest. As far as WinXP,, A clean and smooth running XP, will support and run quad monitors with 1GB System RAM easily. Suggest using the PNY/Nvidia (same,same) 400 NVS Quad card, or NVS 200/280 for dual monitors. Don't be sucked into the hype that PCI-e is better than regular PCI as side by side testing here, proved it to be no better than AGP, which is only 3% faster than regular PCI.