Slow as a snail

My brother is having a huge problem with his computer. It takes forever to boot up and load programs, when it's not even a year old, 3.00 GHz Pentium 4, 1 GB RAM. It just started not too long ago but I have no idea what to do except to try and do a system restore (which I don't know how to do). Can someone please give me some advice? If a system restore is the only solution, that's fine but I don't know how to do it.

 

Well yeah I'm usually pretty good at getting rid of viruses/malware but unfortunately that's not really an option because he has no internet connection since this started. He has a USB wireless adapter that should be picking up the signal from our wireless router but it's not. I can run some tests, but it won't have all the latest updates.

 

First off I would try running CCleaner you will be amazed at the garbage that this little program will get rid of you can get it here at MG link http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4191


I would then download Easy Cleaner and run that it will get rid of some items that CC misses MG link http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=414


Trying System Restore will not get rid of garbage it actually creates it in its files that grow and grow, you might try disabling it then renable right after. You should also defrag the HD, good defrag utilities here at MG

OKAY OKAY so I am slow

 

I can't just plug him into the router because it's much too far away. I tried CCleaner, Ad-aware, and Spybot with no problems found for results so far. Of course they weren't updated completely, but still, I doubt this is a virus/malware problem. I set up his computer to be well protected using this site's instructions before this happened.

 

Tried to start removing any possible malware on the computer using the instructions here and now windows won't even start. It tries to start booting then just shuts down and restarts, and brings me to the screen asking if I want to start in Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, Last Known Good Configuration, etc. No matter which one I select it does the same thing. Now what do I do?