perk2, You have a fine machine there. I doubt that a 100 photos are slowing you down. I agree with owbist (nothing will be served by you deleting them, they are simply in storage on your hard drive waiting for you to use) Some people have thousands of photos. My 2 cents on the slow down is either the HP image program or another program or mutiple programs are running in the background that you're not aware of. You can press Ctrl+Alt+Del and get an idea of what processes are running and using the most CPU. To check the programs that run at startup, get the free CCleaner it not only cleans your computer, but under tools/startup, you'll be able to delete entries that are set to run at startup. Basically all you really need to run at startup are the firewall and anti-virus protection. *note, with ccleaner, during the install uncheck google toolbar if you don't want it.

You don't have to update the drivers if all is working well. However some of the other points PC Pitstop might point out can be useful. Just click on each item mentioned and read their comments. They will 'fix' it for a fee but they do tell you how to do the task yourself if you decide to.

You do not say how long ago you removed Spy Sweeper nor do you mentioned which firewall you are using. Anti spyware programs are almost as important as anti virus programs. If you do not feel inclined to use Spy Sweeper then there is AVG anti malware, Spybot Search & Destroy, Spywareblaster and AdAware. All are good, all are free. However if you select AdAware I would suggest AdAwareSE rather than the 2007 version. I use the first 3 on my computers. Are you using Zonealarm as your firewall? If so there is a possibility that might be causing your problems. It seems with a small number of computers, including mine, that Zonealarm causes problems. I removed it after a very long search and now use Comodo but there are other good free firewalls. You might consider a free online check up of your computer at PC Pitstop, linked below. Just watch where you click and go no where if money is requested. Then click each yellow or red flag showing on completion and read the comments. They will offer to fix issues for a fee but will also tell you how to fix it for free. Nice program in my mind. Here is a link that might be useful: PC Pitstop

I just bought an external drive this week and love it. Apart from being able to free up space on C:\, it is good for arranging automatic backups. I have it set to back up all of my documents, music, and pictures 4 days a week at a time when I am not going to be using the computer. Until now, I had been putting these backups on CDs and DVDs, but it is too easy to forget to make those backups, and it is also a nuisance saving and keeping track of the disks I saved them on. I like the way I can just drag things to the icon for the external drive, too. Easier than burning a CD or DVD, and it has the advantage that you can erase things and use that space again, the way you might on a floppy or a zip disk. My external drive is a 500GB Maxtor that I found on sale Mon. at Fry's in San Diego, for only $99.99. (They seem to change the products on sale from day-to-day, so I don't guarantee anyone will find the same thing at the same price another day. DH paid the same there the day before I did, but he only got a 300GB Maxtor external hard drive) Today a friend who has a business servicing other companies' computers told me he considers Western Digital's hard drives to be among the best, so you got a good one. However, I was happy when he also said I had gotten a bargain. Guess this is the time of year to look for bargains in computer stuff! I probably should mention that since my FireFox browser's "Bookmarks" (=Favorites in I.E.) and things I have saved in its "Scrapbook" add-on, or extension, are not located in My Documents and thus do not come under the automatic backing up, I am going to take care to back them up to the external drive manually every few days.