Dell XPS 700 2.4gHz Core 2 Duo 6600

[Piru]

I'm afraid it's impossible to give generic instructions or answer to this one. You'd need to have physical access to the box to be able to really make a difference.

If you have time and a spare HDD, there's one thing you can do to determine if it's sw or hw issue:

- detach the original HDD from the system
- attach the spare HDD
- install windows xp pro, and drivers required for the system to function
- install whatever sw that was slow before and test it. Is it slow still?

If the system is slow still, then it's HW related issue. If it's fast, something in the old installation is screwed, and unless if you have skills and patience to find out what then reinstall is the only cure. The benefit here is that at least you're not screwing up the existing installation.

One common cause for massive system slowness is fragmentation of the page file or NTFS Master File table (MFT). To find out if this the cause, launch defragmenter and Analyse and check the results.

[Piru]

The standard windows xp defragment can't defragment the pagefile or MFT though.

Pagefile can be defragmented with PageDefrag.
With 2GB memory, this is unlikely to be the cause for the slowdown, however.

Massive fragmentation of system files and/or MFT could still slowdown the system, but it should be limited to cases when something is loaded from / saved to the HDD.

[Piru]

Yes

[Piru]

It's weird that I've never witnessed such slowdown over time myself.

Then again I keep my system quite tight, and don't install every spyware infested app. ;-)