About a year ago I took advantage of a company/government group buy discount from Dell and purchased what was to be my ultimate desktop computer that would hopefully last me several years into the future and satisfy my work computing needs. Having the newest and highly regarded Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 2gb of RAM and a pair of high end graphics cards, I thought it would be the fastest computer I had ever experienced. At first I did nothing to test the speed of this monster, but then reluctantly, I let my 13 year old son use it occasionally to play a couple of online games. It seemed to be up to the task, but now almost a year after purchase it seemed to be one of the slowest computers I have used in years. It seems to take a huge amount of time to do just about anything. I have purchased spyware detectors, adware removers, registry cleaners, and nothing seems to make a difference. I am at the end of my rope and ready to download any and all files that I need to save and completely wipe the hard drive and start with a fresh install of XP Pro to see if I can remedy the speed problem. I hate to do this as it will take hours, if not days to re-install and reconfigure and re-enter all the information for email, passwords for different sites, putting files back where programs can find them, etc.
Does anyone here have a suggestion to save me some grief and hours of frustration? :-?