Yesterday, my wife noticed a real slowdown with my computer. I have a Dell Dimension 2.8 gig, Pentium 4, 1gig Ram, and Nvidia 7900 GS card. I usually do strict maintenance, defrag, etc. I have Norton Systemworks, and Spyware Doctor. My wife noticed that when she switched to her User account from mine, it kind of took "forever". So I went to work deleting programs that I thought I didn't need. I did a CKDISK and my system didn't need a defrag. I had great difficulty trying to change to a different Nvidia driver (older) in the system, even after deleting the current driver, running Ccleaner, and DriverPro to eliminate all traces. Seemed I kept getting a message that some other program was attempting to start by Explorer (there were no other setup programs running).This morning I was successful in putting back my Nvidia up to date driver (91.47). I deleted Norton's Systemworks and replaced it with AVG Free. Things seem a bit faster now, but something is still wrong. When I boot up and go to my User Account, the WINDOWS OPENING SOUND comes on and plays about 20 seconds after my Desktop has appeared. FSX seemed slower than normal today, too, and I have uninstalled and reinstalled FSX several times (thinking that was the culprit).What would cause that serious DELAY in sound loading? I've unchecked all unnecessary startup programs from MSCONFIG. I believe that if I get to that delay on startup sound, I will have solved my slowdown problem.Please, you XP gurus....can you help me solve this? Stan

Sorry I don't have a specific answer, but this raised my eyebrows:"Seemed I kept getting a message that some other program was attempting to start by Explorer " I would do a couple different scans for trojans and other viri/malware and make sure the system is varmint free. Good move getting rid of the Nortons BTW that's a resource hog (IMHO). Otherwise, I would be getting suspicious of my hard-drive or MB. Is the drive making any different or wierd sounds? I assume your sound is integrated? One could also try re-loading sound drivers, too. Good Luck, hope this helps.Kendall

Nothing specific here either however; If you don't already have it I'd recomend downloading RegCleaner.It does a good job of getting rid of useless registry entries andsure sped my system up. I now run it weekly as part of my maint program.

Hello,I use : http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Filemon.htmlIt traces all files accesses (I use the filter option) and it did help me to find many solutions.Hope it helps.

Thanks everyone, because you're all kind of right! I found numerous spyware and ads on the system. And last night it went literally "crazy" with Pop Ups and ads for fixing it with expensive software.I did buy Spybot (registered version) and I ran SpyDoctor (owned it already), ran AdAware, and most of my problem is gone. HOWEVER, my Home Page was changed and I'm researching now on how to fix that. I can't seem to figure that one out. I don't want to buy anymore removal tools if I can help it. I plan to run Spyware Doctor more frequently now. What a horrible lesson to learn.If any of you know how I can get my Hompage back from the Hijacker, please let me know.Thanks again, everyone. Stan

Thanks once more BUT I FIXED MY HOMEPAGE HIJACK AS WELL. I re-ran SpyDoctor and it found over 400 more infections....and it fixed them all (this is not an endorsement...it just worked for me). I'm OK now.I appreciate all your responses. Stan

>Thanks once more BUT I FIXED MY HOMEPAGE HIJACK AS WELL. I>re-ran SpyDoctor and it found over 400 more infections....and>it fixed them all (this is not an endorsement...it just worked>for me). I'm OK now.>I appreciate all your responses.>> StanStan, Glad the scans did the trick. If you're not aware, you can lock the hompepage settings from being changed from within Spybot. I use the advanced mode and then go to Tools (left menu), then check the tools you want displayed, choose IE tweaks, then go into that tool(again left menu) and click it then, choose to lock the hompage from being changed. I also would recommend using the "immunization" feature of spybot which will block bad pages and sites from loading into your system. Another "proactive" tool I use to prevent crap from being loaded is Spywareblaster from Javacool found here: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html. They also offer a homepage locking tool. I assume your using IE, but this will work with Mozilla/Firefox too.Regards, Kendall

Kendall,Thanks for the tips....BTW, after getting all this done today (I take Mondays off during Football Season so I had the time), I ran the FSX Demo and FS9 using my same settings. Frames and performance, in my opinion, were up significantly and I'm positive that all this Spy Crap was bogging my system down significantly.Appreciate the additional tips. Stan