Why is my PC getting so slow?

I dont think the issue is with the VM. Try to optimize performance according to background services.
Normally the RAM is eaten up due to activity. When you put it on sleep mode, the RAM stays at the same rate.
After wakeon, all the open application again starts to eat the RAM. This makes it unresponsive and slow.
Rather than sleep, I suggest using the hibernate. This feature, stores ur session in its place and releases it again, without any hiccup. But this also becomes unresponsive after prolonged use.
I normally use the hibernate option when having 1GB of RAM. After a couplke of days, my laptop becomes unresponsive forcing me to do a restart.

justjax said:

I have old laptop thats about 5-6 years old and I tend to put it into 'sleep' rather than shutdown/restart .. but I've noticed after several hours or a day or so of use (going in and out of sleep over a dozen times a day) it gets very sluggish and on first use this morning it was barely useable until I rebooted it.

When its freshly rebooted its rather speedy (well as speedy as a 6 year old machine running Win 7 can be). Spec wise its a Compaq Presario V5234TU, with a Intel Celeron M 1.46 GHz CPU and 768mb RAM, 60GB hard drive (with 44 GB free) running Windows 7. So whats the most likely cause? not enough RAM? not enough temp hard drive space? So thing else?

Hi pal !
Microsoft's page Windows 7 System Requirements and softpedia Windows 7 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia both says that minimum system requirement is 1 GB of RAM for 32 bit and 2 GB of RAM for 64 bit ! So it is no wonder that your system is a bit slow

Dont worry ! Just buy a new ram stick , obviously it is to match your existing ram's fsb, attach it, and get full speed

gregrocker said:

Def need more RAM: add a gig stick in addition to what u got and you'll notice a big diff. It will help offset the inherent weakness of the Celeron.

Get rid of the freeloaders on your RAM/CPU in msconfig>Startup. I only allow my AV and gadgets (sidebar). Run a free low-impact effective AV like MSEssentials or Avast 5.

Run state-of-the-art free CCleaner "Run Cleaner" and Registry tabs, then Auslogics Disk and Registry defraggers monthly to keep it whistle clean and ordered.

Study the Event Viewer and Performance Log for repeat errors and Google them to a solution over time.

A set of great suggertions to keep the pc faster ! Nice post, Greg

justjax said:

Okay, so I have 768MB ram now (1 x 256 MB, 1 x 512 MB), could I just replace the 256MB ram with a 1GB one and have 1.5GB ram? I know they say you should ideally match the ram, but thats not the case at the moment anyway. Although saying that, I haven't looked inside .. is the 256MB likely to be the onboard ram that I can't change/remove? ...best find a screw driver... :)

Edit: just looked inside, appears that both RAM are removable, why would they put in 768Mb ram originally, odd amount?

You know, the larger the better ... but if you want to keep any of your existing and replace the other, you must match the fsb speed, otherwise it will appear as an average.

Along with the above suggestion, you should also check what is the maximum size of RAM ur motherboard supports. You can check this from the motherboard manual or the brand's website.

dre@ms said:

Along with the above suggestion, you should also check what is the maximum size of RAM ur motherboard supports. You can check this from the motherboard manual or the brand's website.

Was just about to mention that, don't buy any RAM until your certain it can actually use it.

Good Luck!