Computer becoming very very slow and resentful

[katy may]

Hi. Apologies for the vagueness on the technical aspects of this message, but I'm not very good with computers.

I have a Packard bell PC, 2 yrs old, which has become (over the last 6 months) really slow in both internet (I've got broadband connection) and other applications. From starting it chunters to itself for around 15-20 mins and is slower while doing this, the fan also comes on. In the other applications it will sometimes flash up a message about not enough virtual memory. I've got 123GB of hard drive space free (total space 144GB). It randomly closes down applications/internet and when I want to close something it brings up the 'not responding' message in a sullen and resentful way.

i've emptied the temp files which made a small difference for a short while, there is security/virus stuff which comes through blueyonder and which I run frequently and ususally comes up with nothing.

It's on a router but there's only one PC attached at the moment.

What should i do?

 

[Igorian]

There are many things that can slow a PC down.

You say that you have cleared the temp. Internet files. Do you run Disk Cleanup? It's a good idea to clear down other temp storage areas on a regular basis.

Have you performed a disk defragmentation?

What anti-virus and anti spyware applications do you use?

How much memory does your system have and what applications run when you start the machine?