My computer is slowing down.

[shankems2000]

I had an application and support cd which was supposed to be used to restore everything to it's factory settings so that I could speed my system back up, but I lost it, and ordered another one that the cd drive just wouldn't read. Yes, I switched the priority boot to cd-rom in the bios and it still didn't work (and no refunds on it either).

Anyway, I let my friend borrow my xp disc and he installed it and everything but when it asked for him to put in the product key, even though he typed in the correct one, it still said incorrect key entered, and I'm not sure I want to risk doing that to my computer and have xp screw me over too.

Do you think that it just says it's an incorrect product key because the windows xp disc was made specifically for my pc, in other words, the product key won't work on any other computers? If that isn't the case, is there anyway around this, because my computer has slowed down from all of its' years of use. I apologize if it's a stupid question but I'm not computer savvy enough to know this stuff.

Thx

[saraphen]

You may not need to reinstall everything. You may just need to clean up your hard drive.

Do you have virus and spyware protection? or a program to clean up spyware?
When was the last time you ran defrag?

[shankems2000]

Originally Posted by saraphen

You may not need to reinstall everything. You may just need to clean up your hard drive.

Do you have virus and spyware protection? or a program to clean up spyware?
When was the last time you ran defrag?

Oh yea, I have all of that. Norton anti-virus updated and spy-bot anti-spyware. I defragged earlier today actually, and I frequently go into my hard drive and manually rid my computer of any left over files that I thought I deleted but still happen to be in there.

I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have to do a complete wipe and reformat (or whatever it's called) because I've had this thing for about 4 years now and it's starting to get really slow. Just an example, I may find myself waiting for 5 minutes just for the my computer screen to pop up after double clicking!

[saraphen]

You need to contact your manufacturer's support line about the problems with the CD.

Did you run your spybot program?

[shankems2000]

Originally Posted by saraphen

You need to contact your manufacturer's support line about the problems with the CD.

Did you run your spybot program?

You know what's funny? I called them and told them that the cd wouldn't run but they said in order for them to help me they'd have to charge me an extra 25 bucks!! I was like, OOOOOKKKAAAYYY no thanks.

And yea, I have my spyware program setup to run daily.

[MadameX]

Try running Adaware next.

[DBlack]

Try the following:

• run taskmanager and select the Processes tab, then sort by Memory Usage. Make a note of any process using over 10,000kb (10mb) of memory. If you have several of these, make sure you memory usuage isn't over 40% of your total physical memory.
• Identify (do some research) to determine what applications these process belong to. You can easily do this by Googling the process name.
• Your system should have no less than 256mb of ram. I would recommend 512-1gb of RAM for most systems. You will notice a difference in performance.
• Your hard drives could be aging. If you ran defrag on it, consider running a better deffragger by diskeeper.
• Clean out all temp directories, including browser cookies and temporary files.
• run msconfig, and select the startup tab. Here is where you really find out what programs are set to launch at start up. Most application installers don't tell you when they are enabling their processes to auto-start, and most processes don't need to auto-start. Before you make any changes here, do research to identify the program and determine whether or not to disable startup for that program. You can always come back later and re-enable it.

Hope this helps!