I have a Dell Dimension 4300 with 1.85GHz P4, 8 kilobyte primary memory cache, 256 kilobyte secondary memory cache, and a recent increase of RAM from 256 to the maximum 512MB. The RAM increase was an attempt to get my PC performance back to a usable level. I had been using various yearly versions of Norton for a while, but decided to upgrade to 2005 after having a nasty series of adware/spybot problems due to my kids going to various "game" sites that looked harmless enough. Norton addressed the problem, but the indirect way Norton solved the adware problem was through making the performance so poor that the kids no longer want to use my PC.

So I added the RAM. Now the performance is worse. Now I have less than 15% of system resources available after bootup. It was around 18%. I've de-selected various start-up pieces of Norton -- but no help.

Help! Should I upgrade to Windows XP?

Hi,
It is my opinion that any Microsoft windows' version is better than ME... hardly anyone in the whole world uses it anymore. It was the very worst version Microsoft ever released.
Norton 2005 will not run successfully with ME; it has hard enough time with other windows systems!
I would definitely suggest using 98SE, 2000, or XP over ME.
Go for it.
Best of luck,
fredg
PS; If you are looking for a very good Antivirus Program, strictly antivirus, and not all the "built-in" security options, like firewalls, spyware killers, etc, then I suggest AVG (http://www.grisoft.com).
I am a past user of Norton with my Win98SE; and bought the AVG Professional Single Edition for $33 for 2 years. Much, much better than Norton.

Well according to the system requirements for Norton 2005, your PC should have been able to cope - even without the RAM upgrade.

Don't upgrade to Windows XP though. The system requirements for XP read that it needs a processor with a minimum speed of 233Mhz. Installing XP will just grind your PC to a halt. I do agree with Fredq that Windows ME is terrible, but upgrading to XP certainly will not help.

It might be an idea to check what services you are running and shut down as many as possible. Click on Start >> Run and type in "MSConfig" followed by enter. Take a look at the items under the Startup tab. See what's here and shut down anything you don't know. If you are unsure of something - try searching for the process name in Google.

Now we want to do the same for services. This time you want Start >> Run >> Type "services.msc" and hit enter. You could do the services from MSConfig but you have more options in this screen. Take a look at the services tab. If you have any running services that you believe are not needed, double click on them to bring up the properties. Set the startup type to manual and stop the service as well.

Finally, try some other spyware scanners than NAV (I didn't even think NAV looked for spyware). Try

AdAware
Spybot: S&D
Microsoft Anti-Spyware

Try running these in Safe Mode as it seems you will get better results.

I can imagine if the PC is used by your kids regularly that the PC will be filled with a lot of clutter that is unneeded and slowing down the PC. The final things to try are to help tidy up your hard drive. Try running disk cleanup, disk defragment and scandisk. These should all be in Start >> Programs >> Accessories >> System tools.

See if any of those help.