Hello,

New here so not exactly sure how this works but any help is appreciated. I have a Dell Dimension 4550 running with Windows XP and Pentium 4, approximately 5 years old.

I have never had any problems but all of a sudden it's slow beyond belief. It takes forever to start up and all programs take a long time to start, whether they be a windows program or the internet.

I have active McAfee protection, scanned for virues, have run Ad-Aware, CC Cleaner, defrag, disk cleanup. I have plenty of memory.


Not sure what else I can do. Do computers slow down like this naturally?

Thank you

Hello and welcome to PCHelpForum.

I firstly would ask how much free space you have left on your hard drive?A hard drive needs a certain % free to allow your computer to run at a decent speed.

Also could you click on start/run box/type in cmd and hit ok/type in black command prompt box chkdsk /r and hit enter key on your keyboard and let me know the results please.

How much RAM/Memory do you actualy have installed?

I have marked your thread as "Open" so the Tech Team and helpfull members can help you further.

JB.

Hey modmice, welcome to PCHF.

No, PC's don't naturally slow down in time, but slow down can be caused by sooo many different things both hardware and software.

You have listed yourself as Experienced, so you should already know where to find these tools (let me know if you need further help). Performing a disk degrag if you haven't already.

Your PC may become slower the more applications you have starting up and running in the background, clear any un-necessary applications. You can also stop apps from starting by going to Start, Run and type in msconfig. Go to the Startup tab, and clear any apps that should not be starting up.

Malware. Might be worth following "PCHF Prework" on my signature, and posting a log here.

From a hardware perspective, the only thing I can think of is dust! If your fans are clogged up with dust, it's possible that your PC might be overheating. Although this is normally associated with other symptoms such as Blue Screens of Death, PC shutting down without warning, or crashes. Many processors have the ability to "Throttle Back", and reduce it's clock speed in order to lower it's temperature.

EDIT: Marked as Answered.