I thought I had upgraded to IE7 at one point. Yahoo wants me to upgrade to IE8, but after reading about it here, I was reluctant to do so. I did go to windows updates last week to see if there were any I needed to do, but after scanning it said there were none. How do I get IE 7?

First thing is check and see what all is running when the computer starts a lot of programs that do not need to start right off will be a major problem. Check by hitting control,alt,delete once and a screen comes up showing what programs are running and more important are the process's running. Before you stop anything stop by Black Viper's page and make sure it is sate to stop. then after stopping what programs you can reboot and it should be faster. Another thing is what anti virus are you running? Some can be memorr hogs. Here is a link that might be useful: Black Vipers site

Dennis, thanks for a well laid out list of problems. It does help those who feel they can see some or all of your problems. AVG is by far the most popular free anti virus and I doubt that is your issue. I would not remove that one. Spyware Doctor I know nothing about. If you have the original CD or the download stored on your computer you could remove it entirely using the Add/Remove and see if that helps at all. Superantispyware and or Malwarebytes could be alternatives to trying Spybot Search & Destroy. If you use Spybot S&D be sure it is in fact that program and not a sound alike rogue program. Have you ran any cleaners at all? Not registry cleaners but the Disk cleanup in the Accessories/System Tools folder of XP. Try that and a defrag, it will help modestly. Do you have Google or Yahoo toolbars and are they allowed to run in the background? The Google Toolbar has either 3 or 4 entries in your Startup and using your resources. Click Start click Run type msconfig click OK click the Startup tab Now check each of these items and decide if they do in fact need to run. Google each entry before deciding to stop one because if you stop the wrong ones the computer may not start again. If you stop any you need to reboot. During the reboot you will get a dire warning, do not be alarmed, place a check mark not to see it again and continue the booting.

Usually when my computer gets slow, it is the fault of my Internet Service Provider. I'd suggest you running a speed test at the link below. It doesn't require downloading anything to your computer. Just wait for the page to finish loading, and then click on Begin Test. After it has completed, come back here and let us know what your speeds show for download and upload. Do you know about how old your computer is? Has it been slow for some time now, or did it recently just get slow? Good luck. You can do it. Might you have a local friend, neighbor or relative who can maybe assist you? Sue Here is a link that might be useful: Speedtest.net