Responses in ALL CAPS WITHIN your comments. [quote=darkelvensfi]It sounds like you could be running two malware protection programs that are conflicting with each other. Some programs try to cover all the bases (such as virus protection, firewall, email scanner, etc), and you may have one of these programs running along with another program that's trying to perform the same task. When this happens, they 'fight' over each other to get priority and it takes up a huge amount of system resources; quickly taking you up to 100% CPU usage. If you've done scans and haven't found any viruses, try disabling them and do a quick google search for problems with the combination of malware protection programs you are running. Nortons has always been a definite 'no' for me due to this problem. Even by itself, it seems to hog system resources. At the moment I'm using VIPRE which I barely notice running. It's a very good system that is great for detection, prevention, and gentle on your CPU/memory. THAT IS A FABULOUS ASSUMPTION AND I THINK MAYBE THAT WAS HAPPENING AS I HAVE REAL TIME PROTECTION FROM A COUPLE OF VIRUS/MALWARE PROGRAMS. I JUST UNINSTALLED THE ONE CARE PROGRAM SINCE MY 90 DAYS WAS UP AND IT IS DOING SO MUCH BETTER *FINGERS CROSSED* Otherwise, it's quite likely you need to do some sort of registry clean / defragment / reinstallation. If you've not reinstalled windows (on a clean harddrive) anytime in the last year, your system slows down due to the number of programs installed, uninstalled, and the fragments in data allocation. Said differently, every program you install gets put into a registry and windows assesses this to determine where programs are and how to run them. Even when you uninstall programs, much of the registry info remains there. This is problematic when you (for example) install new/different codecs, virus protection, updates, add-ons, etc. The links connecting programs can get crossed if they haven't been programmed perfectly, and the number of registry items can slow things down a great deal. Your hard drive stores data in a sequence; from the widest part of the disk (picture a CD) towards the center (this is why it's always best to install on a new/empty hard drive; the widest part of the disk is also the fastest as it spins - meaning your computer will load that little bit quicker). Over time the hard drive is taken up with data which is written closer to the center of the disk. When you delete items, new data is inserted into those spaces, and broken to be continued at the widest available space. The more often you uninstall/remove/delete items and put new things on to you hard drive, the more fragmented the data becomes. The more fragmented it is, the more places your computer needs to visit when retrieving information. This makes things slow. RegCure is a good registry cleaner. And your computer has an inbuilt defragmenter; right click on your harddrive in windows explorer, click properties, select the tools tab, then choose defragment now. You should be able to work out the rest. I DEFRAGMENT WEEKLY (AND DELETE COOKIES/TEMP FILES) BECAUSE I ONLY HAVE A 5 GIG HARD DRIVE THAT HAS 12% FREE SPACE. UNFORTUNATELY I HAVE A PRE-BUILT COMPUTER WHICH MEANS I CALLED DELL TOLD THEM WHAT I WANTED AND THEY SHIPPED IT TO ME WITHOUT ANY DISKS BECAUSE EVERYTHING WAS ALREADY ON THE COMPUTER. I THINK THEY ASSUMED I WOULD KNOW HOW TO MAKE MY OWN DISKS FROM WHAT IS ALREADY ON MY COMPUTER BUT HONESTLY MY COMPUTER IS A (COMPUTER IS 5 YEARS OLD AND NEVER REINSTALLED). ON TOP OF THAT I DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM DOING. I AM AFRAID TO EVEN TRY MOVING A PROGRAM FOLDER TO DISK OR EXTERNAL HD - BECAUSE AS I SAID BEFORE I TRIED THAT WITH PHOTO SHOP AND LOST THE WHOLE PROGRAM AND IT IS TOO EXPENSIVE FOR ME TO REPLACE. But the best solution is to back up all your data onto a new partition/hard drive, then format and reinstall a new copy of windows. YES, I DO NEED TO DO THIS AS THERE ARE FILES AND PROGRAMS THAT HAVE THE YEAR DATE OF 2004 ON THIS COMPUTER THAT HAVE NEVER BEEN USED. SEE ABOVE ABOUT NOT HAVING DISKS TO REINSTALL WINDOWS -- PROBABLY CAN BUILD MY OWN FROM WHAT'S ON MY COMPUTER BUT I GET A HEADACHE THINKING ABOUT IT; I AM TERRIFIED OF REFORMATTING MY HD. WORST CASE SCENARIO: I HAVE ALL OF MY FILES ON DISK SO THEY ARE THERE BUT I CAN'T ACCESS THEM BECAUSE I AM MISSING ONE .DLL FILE.... OR A DRIVER... OR A DEVICE... * I WANT TO CRY JUST THINKING ABOUT IT * Once that's done, run Nortons Ghost (the only product by Nortons I tolerate) and make a back up of the partition. Install all your drivers and necessary basic windows items that you always use, then make another back up with Nortons Ghost. This way, if anything goes wrong, you can spend all of 5 minutes 're-ghosting' and be up and running with a clean slate all ready to go. Some friends of mine have seperate versions of windows they use for work and games; simply re-ghosting each time they need to. If you install a bad program, you can revert back to a working windows. If you get a nasty virus, you simply ghost it and everything is good again. THIS SOUNDS FANTASTIC AND I THOUGHT THAT'S WHAT SYSTEM RESTORE WAS SUPPOSED TO DO...NOT! Anyhow.. this has turned into a novel. Let me know if you have any trouble with what's written above.[/quote] ~ Mimi ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~ Mimi's Ménagerie ~ http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=temps_bons&misc

[quote=_chaostx]You know these days you can get 1TB off data for less than $100, if you don't feel comfortable deleting stuff, buy one of these and stick it in your PC (or get someone else to). As for your problem, make sure to do a full scan on spybot, try cleaning apps like ccleaner/easycleaner, these will remove LOTS (sometimes GB's) of rubbish data, install a good AV (sorry can't help with this, I don't use AV lolz), also a defrag will help (general performance). Otherwise, a format would be good :D[/quote] I didn't realize that, and yes, I should ad more memory! In the day you had to be sure to add two memory cards into the mother board or something bad would happen...is that still true? ~ Mimi ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~ Mimi's Ménagerie ~ http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=temps_bons&misc

[quote=_chaostx]You know these days you can get 1TB off data for less than $100, if you don't feel comfortable deleting stuff, buy one of these and stick it in your PC (or get someone else to). As for your problem, make sure to do a full scan on spybot, try cleaning apps like ccleaner/easycleaner, these will remove LOTS (sometimes GB's) of rubbish data, install a good AV (sorry can't help with this, I don't use AV lolz), also a defrag will help (general performance). Otherwise, a format would be good :D[/quote] I didn't realize that, and yes, I should ad more memory! In the day you had to be sure to add two memory cards into the mother board or something bad would happen...is that still true? I use ccleaner regularly! ~ Mimi ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~ Mimi's Ménagerie ~ http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=temps_bons&misc

[quote=nioe_yemar]Running disk cleanup first, then disk defragment, and then whatever virus/spyware scans you have would be a good thing to do. We make sure to do this at least once a month. It always helps clear out at least 5-6 gigs of unnecessary stuff. *** [size=10]Grooming, wearables, backgrounds, clothes, Fire & Air Faerie Quest items! http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=nioe_yemar&misc Owner of The Rainbow Fields Mall & Celestial Colours Guild![/size][/quote] My whole HD is only 5 Gigs :( ~ Mimi ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~ Mimi's Ménagerie ~ http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=temps_bons&misc

[quote=Gavin63]Not sure if it will help but you can Google a small program (freeware) yes its safe called Startup When you install it all it does is add an icon in your Control Panel and when you open the program it allows you to control the programs set to start at bootup.. Not sure if the OneCare will be listed but I use it to stop a lot of unnecessary programs from running.. ie nero, quicktime, google updater etc etc.. It won't stop the programs from running when you call for them so I also disable the startup of my printer services as well..[/quote] I am definitely going to do this! OneCare was listed as one of those and also, I never had a problem with OneCare until the most recent update...I don't know what they did to the program but after the last update it just started hogging resources like crazy! What is Nero? I don't think I have every used it and yes, quicktime should not startup on boot! The last time I took a day off to try to make some space on my computer I saw how much the programs I have on here cost to replace and got worried. I only use the programs in the quickstart menu -- the rest of those programs....I dunno - maybe my x-husband added them? see screen shot ~ Mimi ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~ Mimi's Ménagerie ~ http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=temps_bons&misc

[quote=Dmitri]Bonjour is a tool installed by Itunes or something. I cant really say anything about antiviruses anymore. I *just* installed the new AVG Free and it's so damn slow. Slower than Norton and that's saying something! It constantly uses up 15% of my CPU as well and my external HDDs are always doing something o.o I say it's a virus on its own lol. And wow only 5-6gigs? Ouch. My windows xp partition is still 11G and i only have 2 gigs free lol. My vista partition is has about 50 gigs or so left. External HD 1 is at 161GB free, and external portable HD 2 is at 200 something gigs free. So many hard drives on my laptop lol Nero is a CD/DVD burning program And you dont have much programs :P Check out mine lol[/quote] What is the deal with virus scans these days? Shouldn't it work in the background to some degree? I schedule all of my scans to work while I am sleeping but I have to manually update them which is frustrating! Ah, I see -- I don't even have DVD read/write capability -- what is "burning" a CD? Isn't that when you copy something onto a CD? If so, I only deal with word processing / graphic data (no videos, music) and I can copy data from my HD to a CD without Nero. You made me *lol* with all those programs! WOW! I guess I really don't have that many. I can't believe how much memory you have! I guess I should invest in more memory, huh? Is 1G RAM alright? It seems to be fine. ~ Mimi ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~ Mimi's Ménagerie ~ http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=temps_bons&misc

[quote=Gavin63]Just wondering if Nortons & that Malwarebytes would have some conflict also.. Is the nortons an all in one internet security or just antivirus.. If it is an all in one internet security suite you could probably do away with the Malwarebytes A good free AV that I use is BitDefender (Free Edition not trial version) you get 12 months free. Rated in the top AV programs and is pretty good on cpu usage[/quote] The Norton program I have just detects cookies from what I can tell -- it won't even delete them for me. None of the other programs I have will find them for me... not even CCleaner can see/get rid of the ones Norton finds. I hate having all these different programs to cover the blind spots of the mainstream ones! I'll check-out BitDefender. The Symmantec Corp Edition is a virus software with real-time protection and it lets me know immediately when I get something but it takes close to two hours to run and makes everything so slow that I just have to give the whole computer to the program while it runs and I only have 5G in memory now (with 12% free). If I get more memory I guess it could literally take all night to run virus programs, geez! ~ Mimi ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~ Mimi's Ménagerie ~ http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=temps_bons&misc