[bbarry]

A friend's HP computer running XP has begun to really slow down, even when she is not surfing the internet. She says the CPU light is continually flashing, like it's indexing or writing to hard drive or something.

I had her temporarily disable the M/S indexing service, the AVG computer scanning, and her spyware program. But none of that seems to help. Her HP computer runs at 2.2 GHz and only has 512MB of RAM, so it's always been a little slow - but nothing like what she is experiencing now. It's driving her batty, and she's driving me batty. She lives 200 miles away, so we are working this problem over the phone.

What else should I have her do? Thanks.

[JabbaPapa]

Check IDE ribbons and/or SATA cables, to make sure that thet are :

1) snuggly slotted in

2) unsamaged

[NT50]

You could also download MalewareBytes and make sure there is not spyware on it.

NOD32 also offers a 30 day trial of their antivirus program.

AVG does not really catch it all; i'm not sure what anti spyware program they are running.

[bbarry]

Check IDE ribbons and/or SATA cables, to make sure that thet are :

1) snuggly slotted in

2) unsamaged

I will have her do that........thanks. I've never used a Spyware program (I use Defender in Vista)......do those things run continuously?

[NT50]

Malewarebytes does not unless you buy it. I just use the free version and scan at times. The NOD32 Av runs at all times and is probably the superior AV program on the market.

Check IDE ribbons and/or SATA cables, to make sure that thet are :

1) snuggly slotted in

2) unsamaged

I will have her do that........thanks. I've never used a Spyware program (I use Defender in Vista)......do those things run continuously?

[Computeristic]

You could try to upgrade the RAM, seeing that most computers these days have at least 1GB of RAM.

What is the model?

Visit this site http://www.crucial.com and search for the model to find the RAM for it. It will tell you the maximum amount of RAM you can have in your laptop.