Computer running slow and freezing up

Hi........been having a problem and could use some advice. Here lately my pc has been running slow and at times literally freezes up......meaning, the monitor is on, white screen, and the processor is on.........turning the power switch on or off doesn't help and I have to turnoff the power and then turn it back on to get going again.

I run windows xp service p ack 2 I use avg paid version for my anit virus, and use ccleaner slim, adaware se personal and just installed windows defender. It seemed to help but still running slow and freezing up.

Not familar with registry cleaners and such as I am a bit concerned about installing one and then deleting something I shouldn't and be in worst shape than I am now. Have seen some products like ccleaner slim, registry patrol, xpmedic, and regcure from this site and others and was wondering if one of these would help me out. I think I need something to do the cleaning up of bad links, files, incomplete whatever that they talk about doing to restore my computer to the efficiency and speed as when it was new. I have deleted all unnecessary programs that I don't use like games and such.

I am new at alot of this stuff and would appreciate any help any Geek could offer.

THanks for taking time to read this and for any advice you can offer

Take Care and Hope you all have a good day

Larry

 

First thing I do when I get no response when running a program is check the Task Manager to see what is running. Right click taskbar and choose Task Manager or use Start, Run, type in taskmgr, ok. There may be a background application running that shouldn't be, you should be able to end the application there. I only have Windows Defender running on one system and use TrendMicro PC-cillin on all.
www.tweakhound.com has quite a few things you can do to speed your system up under the Super XP Tweaking Guide. Things like turning off indexing, no system sounds, using Classic view, turning off services you don't need, disabling devices you don't use, or even turning off System Restore if you do backups. He also touches on working with the registry. tweakguides.com has tweaking companions for XP and Vista that you can download as pdf documents. I've gotten quite a few new registry tweaks from there. This program may help out http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4991
Sure hope you didn't catch anything while surfing the web, a good article to read would behttp://http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=25834
and http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407
Good luck with your OS, hope something here is of some use to you. These are my current Favs: majorgeeks.com, blackviper.com, dougknox.com, kellys-korner-xp.com, theeldergeek.com, tweakhound.com, tweakguides.com, windowsxp.mvps.org and tweakxp.com

 

Yes that is a good place to start for cleaning out any beasties and then go ahead with some programs...CCleaner is a good one

 

Thanks to all the great folks who responded............am taking your advice and looking into your recommendations. Will remove windows defender. Talked to a friend who recently purchased REGCURE and is quite happy with it so far................may end up getting that for my registry cleaner.

Larry