I have a Dimension 2400.  Its running slow in nearly every aspect.  I've had the pc since 7/24/2005.  It was a Dell Outlet PC.  It worked fine until about 2 weeks ago.  I've not installed anything new, and haven't installed any new hardware.   I basically just use the pc for surfing the net, and email, but now, even that is so difficult, its agrivating.  The pc is connected to a Linksys router, and that is connected to a cable modem.  There are 4 pc's on the router.  All of the other pc's are fine.  I'm using Norton (as it came with the pc) and microsoft antispyware.  Both are updated, and both have been on the pc since I first got the pc.  The processor is a Celeron 2.8 and the system has 256 mb or ram, and an 80 gb HDD.  The drive is less than 2% fragged.

 

Symptoms: (just some)

1.  takes forever to load any web page, yet other pcs on the network are fine.  (I've switched the ports, with no change to the effected pc).  Yet, I can do a bandwidth test, and the speeds are over 4500, which is on par with my other workstations.

2. right click on desktop takes 10 - 20 seconds to respond

3. click on any menu from any application (IE, start menu, Outlook Express, Paint shop, etc) and it takes many seconds before the actual menu appears.  ...after about 10 seconds or so, you get the outline, then you eventually get the menu items a few seconds later.

4. type text in any text box, and it lags so far behind, I can go to the bathroom before it catches up.

5. starting any program takes way longer than it used to.

6. when mousing over buttons or menu items, it can take many seconds before the button or menu item responds.

 

Again, all of theses slow downs are new, in that they did NOT occur before about 2 weeks or so ago.