Laptop veery slow--memory @ 100%

Hello all,

Hopefully someone can help. My friends laptop (Dell Insoiron 4000 with Win Me and 128 Mb ram) is at a standstill. It boots, but slowly. And here is where it gets fun. She has not been able to log onto AOL 9.0. The program opems, but when trying to sign, it stops.

She first called AOL who had her check a few things and her memory utiliazation is 95 to 100 %. They said this is not OUR problem, call Dell. 2 hours later Dell said it had a firewall on it (it doesn't), call a computer guy.

Now I've had Spybot S & D and Ad-Aware on it for some time and I ran these, with only 2 items showing up for removal. I ran McAfee (security center w/virus scan) and it came up clean. I understand it doesn't have up-to-the-minute updates, but without internet access, it jwill have to do.

I also ran Everest so I could verify the ram usage and it matches AOL's info pretty closely. At Idle, with only Everest running, I'm hovering around 97%. With AOL open, 99%. Try to sign on, 100% and a dead stop.

I opened up MSCONFIG and verified every running process (26) and all are valid (no virus/trojan,malware). Now, this unit has never been a speed demon, but it has not done this.

Just to get it "moving" again, I've considered adding more ram. But I don't want to just throw money at it, I want to "fix the problem". Something has triggered this.

I read all you info on running a Hijack This log. As you can see I've done some of the programs you have suggested. I can't get online to do the download. I could put it on a disk and try to install that way, but with it running at 97 to 100% at idle, I don't know if it would accept it.

So, can you help me? Any suggestions on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time to read my long winded explanation. If I can supply any more details, just yell.

Thanks again.

 

Try checking to see how many programs run at startup and which ones. Some of these may not be needed. Also run defragg and disk cleanup these may help. Check your cache setting for whatever program need cache's . For instance all your cookies are stored in a temporary internet folder you can clean these out every now and then and reduce the cache size in your internet options. Adding more system memory won't hurt though and may help a whole lot.