Delayed operations.

for starters, has it always been so slow or is this a recent occurrance? do you have all of the recent updates for vista?

 

i would also consider removing some of the bloatware (such as the dell tune up service!) as it may be causing some conflict with other software, which may be why it's so slow.  mcaffee also isn't the best antivirus software in the world... it's pretty resource-heavy, which could be tying up RAM that would be put to better use towards more important tasks.

 

have you considered adding more RAM to your system? 2 more gb of RAM would only cost around $30-40, depending on where you go.  just 1gb of RAM would even suffice (which would really only cost about $18).  2gb of RAM is fine for vista and normally you should have any trouble running the OS with it, but more is always nice/better.

 

while your CPU might be fast enough for vista, i have a dimension 9150 with a pentium D dual core 3.0ghz CPU and it's been running flawlessly.  i do also have 4gb of RAM, which likely is a factor.  

 

if you had any more information that could help pinpoint the problem, that would be great as well.

Thanks a lot discostu668. I have removed the dell tune up service, as you said. I think it has made a small difference. But it is still very slow. I am thinking of getting 1 or 2 gb ram. That should do a lot. I am still trying to remove some services which I don't use frequently. I don't know whether it will work or not. I will come back if I am getting any improvement. Thanks a lot for the reply.