Shoutbox

Today, I switched on my computer to find that it was really slow at loading. It finally loaded. Then I started to use it and it was going slow. I noticed the other day, Powerpoint opened for no reason.

So, the best thing to do is to scan for viruses/spyware.

I first used Spybot S&D. Just a few tracking cookies and some recently opened file lists. Then I tried Ad-Aware SE. Nothing bad detected. Then I even tried Microsoft Antispy. Still nothing. I still had Norton left, but that takes a while, so did a few other simple things before.

I cleared my cache, backed up and my cookies and deleted them. Then ran disc clean-up to get rid of other files. Then I did disc-check and then defragmented. Still, the speed of XP was slow. Then I decided to use Norton AntiVirus 2004. (All these had up to date definitions loaded). I ran Norton, locked my computer and went away. Came back and to my horror, for some strange reason, there was the welcome to Windows screen, please press CTRL+ALT+DEL to login ... blah blah...

So, I decided to go back in and scan some common virus/spyware places like C:\WINDOWS, C:\WINDOWS\System32, and C:\Documents and Settings.

I then sat there with it, moving the mouse so the screen saver didn't come on etc., then, it did it again, I realized what had happened before, the computer had restarted for no reason...

It had managed to scan most of the files and those results showed no viruses/spyware...

I went to the Startup and Recovery options in the My Computer Properties and had unchecked Automatically restart ages ago.

I haven't done anything like any tweaking recently (I did ages ago and the computer has been fine up until now...), nor have I done any installations...

I do have a firewall as well, and haven't accepted any of those msn viruses which I have noticed that some of my contacts have, as it has been trying to send itself to me, but it wasn't detected so it doesn't seem that I have it.

So, the reason I have explained this is to get an answer to this thread title...

I am currently using Windows XP SP2.

It would be appreciated if someone could help me.