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#1
Computer Running Slow
My father's computer has began running real slow out of the blue a couple of months ago. I have spent time on and off trying to pin point what exactly caused the problem, but have had no success yet. He uses the computer sparingly at home, however, he does leave it running all the time. He doesn't really browse the web or do anything on the computer that would bring viruses or spyware on it. He is a CPA and mainly uses it to work at home.
So far I have checked for viruses with AVG which is always running and I have also run Ad-Aware to check for Spyware, so far nothing. I downloaded Core Temp to check the processor temps and they are running around 30c. The bios only offered a hard disk check which passed. I also used cCleaner to clean up the computer - registry, temp, the whole nine. Lastly, I also defragged the hard drive.
The computer starts up normal, however, once it opens the desktop it takes a while to load and when you click on applications like firefox or itunes they take forever to load. I check the RAM and CPU usage and they are very low, about 5-10% cpu usage and about 30% ram usage (1GB RAM). Its a dual core pentium processor, Dell computer that is about 3-4 years old running windows xp 64 bit. I told him that he should just reinstall Windows but he wanted me to check the rest of the hardware components first to see if there were any errors. I did a lot of research trying to find a hardware diagnostic software that tests everything on the computer from the CPU, RAM, motherboard, hard drive, PSU and graphic card if possible - but cannot find anything. My Dell has PC Doctor loaded on my computer from the factory and runs all these diagnostics for me but that is not really available to the public. Can anyone recommend a good diagnostic software, preferably free? Or any other ideas on what I can check.
Sorry for the long post, thanks