slooooooooow computer

Hi All,
You've all helped me in the past and my fingers are crossed that you can help me once again.

There is def. something wrong with my PC. The internet runs perfectly....we have run all the appropriate virus scans and spyware removal tools and there is nothing wrong with our internet connection.

Here are the problems:
-Computer runs sloooooowly (except for the internet)
-Booting takes over half an hour
-Opening every program takes several minutes +
-When I ran a windows update yesterday (8 critical updates), the computer ran MUCH slower afterwards.

We opened the computer, checked the fan and power supply and replacing those made no difference at all.

The hard drive normally makes a slight cranking noise when booting, but there are few of the usual noises now.

Also, a friend ran msconfig and was concerned that the CPU usage seemed to be below normal levels.

Now that the heat wave has passed, I can no longer blame the heat.

Help!

 

Well, when was the last time you defragged the computer? Was the computer running great b4 the update?

 

A few Q's/thoughts:
1. Are you on a network? (DNS probs)
2. What is your HDD light doing during boot?
3. How much free space have you got on your HDD partitions?
4. Are you using a paging file? Is it big enough to prevent constant HDD reads/writes?

P