Typing an e-mail is low and clicking either icons or links a little slow as well

Not sure what forum this belongs in so I thought I would post my question here. Recently when typing out an e-mail or clicking say on the C: drive icon or control panel or even links on a website it all seems to happen very slow. With typing out e-mails you can be typing and then all of a sudden your cursor stops and like a minute later the letters start to appear as if you were only just now typing them out. Typing stuff out on websites doesn't seem to be affected. When you click on links it seems to take a good 5 seconds before it actually clicks. It doesn't happen all the time and appears to be random at best, but when it does happen it does so for a good period of time. I use Ad-aware and Spybot S&D as well as san my computer every week for viruses. I don't use a firewall or keep virus scan on all the time as I am a gamer and leaving that stuff running in the background is killer for the game. I am on dial-up through Earthlink and here are my system specs:

P4 2.4 ghz
512 Mbs DDR
Geforce FX5200 128 mbs DDR


Any clues as to what can be happening and what I can do to fix it?

Edit: forgot to mention I also recently defragged the computer.. it was done last week.

second edit: I also keep programs in teh background down to a minimum. Usually only Scanreg, Systray, Propelaccel and what ever 98SE needs minimumly to run is all that's in teh background. Usually when I run Ad-aware only 12 or so things are running in teh background.

 

Anyone know?

 

Since you're running 98, you don't get a detailed list of processes using processor % in the ctrl-alt-delete task manager, which sucks. It appears something is eating up processor time on your machine. You didn't mention what you are using for anti-virus, some are better than others for catching trojans & other 'non-viral' programs, although ad-aware & spybot should be catching most of those...

I'd recommend installing a good firewall (even if only temporarily). Set it to only allow the programs you wish to have 'net access. Set it to alert you when any unauthorised program is attempting to connect. Perhaps you'll find the offender that way.

Also, check in the start menu/programs/accessories/system tools-->system monitor. I can't recall if it installs by default in 98 or not, but if it's there, you can have a little real-time chart running of processor usage & confirm if the processor is being used during these times.