easy (but annoying) windows me problem

well, i hope its easy. i've got this computer running windows me, and whenever i open a new window (a new browser window, the control panel window, etc.) there is about a 5-7 second delay, then it opens. in the meantime, the current open window(s) lock up until the new window opens.

this is a new problem. the system has been running great forever. i did go through and clean the registry, as well as all the cache and i ran spybot, and diskkeeper trying to get it humming again.

system specs:
Gateway model (not sure)
Windows ME
P2 233 MMX
160 mb ram
1-4g original installed hard drive (~40% used)
1-12 g installed later-on hard drive (~20% used)
Soundblaster 64V
Modemblaster Di5601-1

like i stated before, i think its a registry setting because this system has ran perfect (yes, EVEN with Windows ME installed) since ME has been out.

 

Can you go back to a restore point for the last known good system?

 

don't know...but its not worth it if i can.

 

You could try to repair/reinstall Internet Explorer:
Repair Internet Explorer when its acting weird

You could try to check for hardware/software conflicts:
Checkpoints for fixing a hardware/software conflict

 

I'm not sure if Windows ME has it... but if it does, I'd run a performance monitor... and check the following: Processor Time, Paging File Usage, Page Reads a second, Page Writes a second, and just plain Pages per second.

The reason I suggest this is because your processor is quite slow, and I think you might be accessing the paging file (swap file) a lot especially since you have 160 MB RAM (which I don't know why it would happen now since you said it seemed to run fine forever). But that's what it sounds like to me... I'd defrag if it needs it for sure... that'd speed things up quite a bit. Also get one of the tools from this site under the registry downloads... find you a good program to clean and defrag the registry.

Like I said, sounds like your processor is having to access the paging file quite a bit. Defragging the hard drive and registry will help some, but upgrading your RAM would be great.