Dell XPS 700 2.4gHz Core 2 Duo 6600

[coldfish]

uncharted wrote:
@Piru & Coldfish

While what you say is true in 99.99% of cases, Windows can (not always) get its knickers in a twist all by itself over time.  I've seen it happen on completely closed systems - no new software, no internet connection.

0.01% = unlucky.

Yeah, it can and does happen, but more often its due to faulty hardware, usually the bit between the screen and seat.

 :-P

[Georg]

It might be you have an Anti Virus program or tool with an option activated causing it to monitor/viruschecks in realtime all file accesses/reads/writes. That slows down things a lot.

Or a tool that maintains some database.

A tool called FileMon (google for it) which is similiar to SnoopDos on the Amiga might give some hints.

I once had a rootkit virus which also caused massive slowdown.

[Yisrael48]

REINSTALL XP

[RRunner]

If the problem is most notable during startup, try de-fragmenting your registry. I have noticed dramatic performance increases (especially at startup) after optimizing the registry using Registry Mechanic.