Computer slows down

[alanofanfield]

My home build desktop works fine at first but after a couple of hours it slows down eventually i have to re-boot when it works fine for a couple of hours
when it slows down, i cant open programmes
I have a 3.00 gigahertz AMD Athlon II X2 250 and 4MB of RAM
The mainboard is Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. M4A785T-M Rev X.0x
Serial Number: 106835020000053
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 2206 07/22/2010
I am running winXP SP3

 

[OhSnapWord]

What happens if you turn on the computer and let it just sit there for a few hours?

 

[alanofanfield]

Thanks for reply,
It makes no difference if the computer is used or not it still goes slow

 

[OhSnapWord]

Open task manager and go to processes. Sort by the amount of memory used and see if anything is eating up all your RAM.

You could also try a hard drive test as well as a memory test.

 

[Kmart1212]

Download a program called CCleaner and run it, just gets rid of useless things that might help it faster, and if you could let me know how much memory it cleared.
CCleaner - Download

 

[Mangotango]

You should also Download an anti spyware program such as superantispyware its free and will check your pc for naughty spam and adware that can slow your pc down.
You should also open computer, right click on your hard drive, select tools and choose disk check, check your hard drive for file system errors.

 

[alanofanfield]

CPU Ussage at switch on is between 5% and 40% while running Firefox and adobe auditions
Memory usage is mainly firefox which is using 300000K
will see how the figures change after an hour or so

 

[alanofanfield]

CPU now running at between 10 and 40%
Processes unchanged with firefox eating 3000000K
machine is slowing down a bit

 

[OhSnapWord]

What version of Firefox? That is a ton of memory for Firefox.

 

[alanofanfield]

Version 17.1.1
with 5 tabs open.
closing tabs makes very little difference 305 down to 272

---------- Post added at 09:37 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:34 AM ----------

Machine now refuses to open any more programmes or windows
just running firefox and adobe auditions