Slow running XP system

Hi,

I have noticed that my XP system is really slow to load software. It seems to take ages for software to open. I noticed this when i tried to open a PDF file then I couldn't open a word document.

I have downloaded the spybot search and destroy exe file but when I goto open this file and any other software which is a exe file it says that it can't find the directory or location or something and comes up with an error window, saying error 82.

When I change profiles to the guest profile the comp seems fine but I do not have the priveleges to open and install software. But when i go into user accounts to change this, I can't access the user accounts icon when in administrator mode????

Does anyone know what is wrong and how do i fix it? Have got symantec antvirus corp edition and that hasn't picked anything up, also tried latest version of stinger and that didn't find anything.

Thanks

James

 

Please post your comp's specs.

 

Have a 900 mhz intel celeron processor, 128mb of ram.

As i said when i go into another account, (guest account profile) the comp works as it had before (normal). But now I do not have the administrative priveleges to install software to try and fix the problem. When i try and open the spybot or ad aware software it comes up saying that the directory or file cannot be created. error 82 unable to create directory......

have no idea where to start or what the problem is...????

 

I'm not surprised that your apps load slow. considering when XP loads up it has already chewed up some 80-95MB of RAM just on boot. That doesn' t leave you much to play with. Programs that require a decent chunk of RAM are going to have to swap out to the hard drive which means you're stuck having to wait for the hard drive I/O which is significantly slower than physical RAM.

 

We have P4 1.5ghz machines at work with 128mb of ram running Pro.

We also have P3 1ghz machines with 256mb of ram running Pro.

The P3 machines are easily 20% faster.

XP is incredibly ram hungry.