See if the following general clean up steps help improve both performance and other problems you are having.

First, update your virus definitions and do a complete system scan for viruses.

Next, boot into Safe Mode (reboot your computer and tap several times on the F8 key just before Windows starts to load). Go to your Windows/temp folder and delete all of the files in the folder. Then, run scandisk and then defrag on your C: drive.

Next, get rid of all of the unnecessary programs that run from startup. To see how to do this and to see what is not likely to be needed running from startup, see the following:

http://www2.whidbey.net/djdenham/

for programs running from startup that are not listed at the above site, see the following:

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_index.htm

You might also want to get rid of any spyware that you downloaded and installed with along with free programs. Note that spyware's main purpose is to report on your browsing habits, but most of it is poorly written, interferes with other programs running on your computer, and consumes system resources while it is running. Also note that if you remove the spyware, the free programs that the spyware came with will not likely run. You have to decide whether the free programs and included spyware are worth the penalty you pay for other problems. To get rid of the spyware go to the followng site and download, install, and run Ad-Aware and Spy-Bot Search and Destroy:

http://security.kolla.de/

http://www.lavasoft.de/index.html

After performing these steps you should have a pretty clean running computer, and, hopefully your problems will have disappeared. Let us know how this works out.

Steve