Slow computer

I have an Acer Aspire 5516 and run Windows Vista. My a year ago my computer was running slow, so I downloaded CCleaner and Slim Computer This seemed to work pretty well. In the last month though my computer is REALLY slow. Also, I keep getting pop-up windows, and it sounds like the computer is running like crazy (in the background) even when I have nothing going on. Any thoughts?

tribefan1@roadrunner.com

 

Malware.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407

 

You might want to try the following to troubleshoot to if it is a hardware problem or software problem.

Checking your Hardware
Yes, Physically cleaning your computer can help reduce the heat build up. If it is a laptop you can buy a fan to place under your laptop to cool it down. Check to see in your task monitor if you are using alot of RAM or cpu cycles. If you are using up a large percentage of your RAM you probably need upgrade to more RAM or use less programs at the same time. If you CPU is continously spiking, it could be your computer is overheating or you have a program that using it. You can try to find and kill it using your task monitor.

Cleaning Up Your OS
1) run chdsk on your harddrive to see if you have any bad sectors
2) try degfraging your harddrive
4) if using a lot of ram try uninstalling some of your unused software
You can try some software fix some of these problem if you dont want to do it manually.
Checkout http://solvingpcproblems.com

 

From seeing these symptoms many, many times, plodr and the mekanic have given the correct advice. Bob214 should go to the Malware Forum and go through Read and Run Me First so the volunteers there can advise him on how to remove the malware. It IS definitely malware that is causing his issues.