Very slow in all games... (it's not spyware etc)

Ok my specs:
P4 (2.0 Ghz)
nVidia GeForce 3 Ti 200 (drivers = latest)
831 Mb ram - odd number, yes, there is a 512, a 256 and a 64 in my PC (and yes that adds up to 832 but my PC just shows 831 lol)
No sound card (it broke so I'm using motherboard speaker sockets)

Point two:
There is no spyware, adware, malware left on my pc.

Ok for my examples I'm first going to use counter-strike 1.6 as an example...
I used to get over 60fps on 1024x768 resolution, and highish quality, audio quality high. Now its 30fps max, usualy when I'm staring at a wall. It can get down to 10fps.
Counter-strike source I can't remember what fps I had int hat but it always was lowish, even on lowest quality. HL2 ran with hardly any problems when that came out on highest settings and large res. Now CS:S is about 5-15fps on lowest in all qualitys
Call of Duty used to be a fairly high fps, never noticeable but I haven't checked it recently though.
Brothers in Arms goes below 25fps often
EVE online goes slowish often.

Ok so that clears up the problem that it could be a single game...

But if not a bug in a game... What is it that is slowing me down? It just isn't as fast as it used to be, that's for sure.

Is there anything I can do to give more information? Because I realise this isn't enough.

 

[edit]
Windows XP SP2 Build 2600 or whatever
[/edit]

 

How much hardrive space do you have left? Could be that.

 

Driver C:/ (master)
5.60GB out of 38.3GB

Drive D:/ (slave)
29.3GB out of 76.3GB

I don't think that that is what is causing the problem but maybe I should free up drive C a bit... I'll get it to 10GB and see what it is like.

 

How does one check for fps ?

 

Extra hardspace had no effect...


To show fps in Counter-strike 1.6 you type net_graph n (n being 0,1,2 or 3 for diffrent graphs or just fps). I think its the same for Counter-strike source. Other games though will differ.

 

Updates to the OS can have this effect, because by default they seem to add more & more "background spinning"...

If you updated to SP2 before you saw this problem, I'd venture a guess that this upgrade may be the cause. Other upgrades (such as game upgrades) may also be adding to the slowing.

There's plenty of threads here that can talk you through trying to reduce "background apps" to only those you really need. Try this & see what happens.

 

follow this guide

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353

 

I installed SP2 after solving my spyware problem. Maybe before it was spyware causing the slow down and now the patch. I followed black vipers guide before I patched so maybe the patch put more processes back on. I'll check. And I'll have a look at that MS guide too ty.

 

except black viper's site seems to be down right now.

 

Got a couple of questions for you Yakodi:

1. This one's a bit daft, but have you tried going into your task list and stripping it down to the bare minimum (Explorer.exe etc.)? I would obviously advise that you disable your net connection while doing this because your virus scanner and firewall will be down, but it could equally be one of these two that slows the computer down. It's unusual, but it's possible. It also isn't unheard of under SP2 for the inbuilt firewall and your own firewall to interfere with each other.

2. Have you recently updated your NVIDIA drivers? The most recent ones have been very buggy and I've just ended up reverting back to ones from September because they seem to work better with all of my games.