Windows 7 - Why is my PC getting so slow?

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?

Maybe it has a large amount of temp files, or it hasn't been defragged in months.

Have a look in;
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp

And delete everything within it.

NOTE: You must have Show Hidden Folder enabled to see the 'AppData' folder.

And do a defrag using Windows Defragmenter.

My Computer > Right Click on C: Drive > Properties > Tools > Defragment Now.

A reboot after doing the following steps couldn't hurt.

Hope this helps.

Its a combination of RAM, virtual memory. How much space is left in your boot drive?

Shortcuts:
Open Run - Type in temp
Clear all the files.
Open Run - Type in %temp%
Clear all the files.
Open Run - Type in prefetch
Clear all the files.

Or simply use CCleaner to do the job for you.

In the RUN command type: msconfig (hit enter)

In the STARTUP tab.....
how many things you got going on there.

I only rebuilt the laptop last week so I'm assuming its shouldn't need defragging. I have just cleared out the Windows temp, but if virtual memory is possibly linked,do I need to reduce/increase the amount of virtual memory?

Maybe you got a virus that is using up all of your RAM...

did you ever run a virus or a spyware/malware check on your computer?

You should increase the virtual memory. BTW, how much is the space left in your boot drive. Also have you enabled Hibernate? If yes, this will take some huge amount of space. If lack of space and you dont use hibernate, you can disable it.

Don't think I have a virus. Its a fresh build and I have anti virus, etc running. as for space on the boot drive, do you mean on the main drive? (only have one hard drive). My main/C: drive is 60GB I have 44 GB free.

What about the virtual memory??

Well its automatically set at the mo to 1024MB, whats should I change it too (and what should the min be, it show 16MB at the mo). Should I also switch Processor scheduling from Programs to Background services?

BTW, since this morning I have turned off Hibernate, although with 44GB free, I wouldn't have thought its a space issue, but what do I know.