Slow computer

[House of Pancakes]

I bought my computer last year. It ran very well for awhile, until last month when my Norton Antivirus trial ran out at the exact same time I got a virus. I couldn't do enough to help it, and it wiped out my computer. So, I had to reformat.

I got rid of everything and started over, brand new. Ever since then, my computer has been having performance problems, even though there is nothing indicating the reformatting job was bad [I had a friend of mine who had reformatted her computer herself do it]. Downloading speeds are UNBELIEVABLY slow [like, dial-up slow] when I have wireless cable. My computer has some problems just loading stuff. When I open up my internet browser, it takes a bit to get started, when it should just come right up with my processor speed. It also freezes every once in a while when it's multi-tasking.

MY SPECS:

HP Desktop
Windows XP
2.66 ghz processor
512 RAM
14o GB hard drive

When I reformatted, I got Norton Antivirus 2004 Professional for one year, changed my default browser from IE to Mozilla, and have Adaware and Spybot. No problems are detected, it's just for some reason, my performance is terrible. Loading times and downloading times suck when I should be running perfectly smoothly. A friend of mine said it's possibly Soulseek that's taking over my computer, as it's a huge program, takes up lots of room, and has made a friend of his with a similar computer to mine become slow over time.

Can anyone recommend me a way to up my performance?

[DS]

Make sure you've downloaded all the drivers you need (Videocard, Soundcard, Ethernet Card, etc) because those can slow down your computer considerably. Also, try going to your power options from the Control Panel and going to the Hibernate tab and uncheck "Enable Hibernate" if you don't use it. It takes up as much space as you have RAM so it's taking 512MB of your diskspace. That isn't the problem but it's a nice space saver.

[OssMan]

ask The Melvins