laptop running slow & will randomly shut down

My laptop has been running slow recently. Granted its old but I have not seen it run this slow before. My laptop will also shut down on its own, its beeps three times and then turns off (usually when I'm burning a CD, running SpyBot, or on the internet for extended periods of time). I have CCleaner installed and use it daily, and I have AVG wich also runs daily. I have not been able to complete a SpyBot scan since I downloaded it. I had McAffe but I it was not able to complete a scan so I uninstalled it and have been using AVG ever since. I'm concerned this might be a hardware problem but I don't know what else to do. Any ideas?

Great website by the way. Enormous amounts of useful information on here, I praise you all for you hard work. Thanks

 

Oh yeah, I have a WinBookJ4 (I know, you are jealous) XP Pentium 4 and ...I don't know what else you would need to know.

 

You can start by ruling out the pieces of hardware that are easy to remove. Take out one of your memory modules for example. If nothing changes, put it back in and take out the other.

 

Well, I'm not sure about the projection clock....and Mimsy, outside of preforming operation on my computer are there any other diagnostic tools or scans that you might recomend? I'll be honest, I wouldn't even know where to start looking for my memory modules. College was tough on me. It sounds like a new laptop/computer might finally be necessary. Thank you very much for your prompt response, if you think of anything else please let me know. Kudos to you!

 

Memory surgery usually isn't that difficult, actually. If you have a size 0 philips screwdriver, you should be able to access at least one of your memory sticks. If not...

Let's start over, actually. Hold off on the surgery for a bit longer.

How much free space do you have on your hard drive? Which operating system do you have? How much RAM do you have installed? You say you uninstalled McAfee and that should have helped, but how did you do that? McAfee, lie Norton, can be a real pain to get rid of. Check out their official uninstaller if you haven't already, to make sure you got rid of all of it. You may need to uninstall and reinstall AVG after using the uninstall tools.

 

Glad to hear we can hold off on the surgery. Using Windows XP, 14.3 GB in use, 22GB free. 512 KB RAM, I know....sweet. I uninstalled McAffe through control panel's uninstall wizard. I will check out the web-site you sent for McAffe and let you know how that goes. Thanks.

 

I've just been searching around on the web and I can't find any info on the beep codes. However, I believe the problem may be due to the system overheating.

I have a few questions to ask to confirm this:
1. Where is the laptop situated? Is it on a solid surface with plenty of airflow around it?
2. How old is the laptop?
3. Once the laptop has shut down, how soon afterwards can you start it back up?
4. Can you hear any fans running loudly before the computer shuts down?

 

Also take a look at your background processes process explorer is best for this. Try taking the battery out as a faulty battery can drag the supply down and cause all sorts of problems.

 

If you have all the service packs installed, 521MB RAM is really skimping on what your computer wants. Given today's RAM prices, it will be a comparatively cheap thing to do. It will require some minor surgery though