Windows 7 32 bit performance has become incredibly slow suddenly

I have a Windows 7 32 bit that is part of an Apple Bootcamp partition. I use the Windows 7 part of the computer almost exclusively for gaming purposes. The performance standards of the computer are fantastic, so any poor performance is obviously some sort of problem.

To start, my Windows 7 performance instantaneously fell off a cliff recently. One second I was playing Call of Duty problem free and the next second it is laggy and slow. The entire Windows 7 has been this way ever since. Even low graphics games with settings set low can not maintain performance. This poor performance extends to the internet where it might take me 5 minutes to get from my homepage to youtube.

My question is is there anyone who has encountered this problem in the past? Was it resolved, and how so?


This last point may not be related but I have been noticing that when finish playing a game on Steam, multiple random Google Chrome windows have been running in the background without my doing anything. Could this be related to the awful performance?

Thanks

Thanks for the help! You're right about the 32bit thing but thats a whole other issue, my 64bit disc wouldn't download when I installed Windows 7.

For this issue at hand, I found my solution. Somehow my Microsoft Security Essentials stopped and I had to re-download it and eliminate some small viruses. This cleared up my performance issues.