(+14rep) Comp running slow?!

[Markeh]

Hiya.
I bought a new computer last year for starting uni and tried to get a good one so it would last me so it has 3gb ram and stuff and has always been quite fast and had no major probs with it.

However, lately it has really really started to slow down a lot!

For instance when I log on, it will take a good minute or so before anything even really starts up (in particular my antivirus nod32). Also I have been getting a lot of crashes in browsers and stuff - particularly firefox. Basically every time I am in firefox it ends up freezing, not responding and crashing. So annoying :@

I don't particularly have LOADS on my computer either, just really songs and pictures but nothing extreme.

I have one of those wee cpu usage reader things in my sidebar, and when I turned the computer on the cpu usage was at like 98% when things were starting up.. and now I am just sitting typing here it is at 57% which seems a bit high considering all I actually have open is firefox!

Im thinking I will just remove firefox anyway and get smoething else.

I was wondering if my hd was getting full or something, but in my comuter its as though I have two?
I have one which is called "Vista (C" which is pretty much full - and then another one which is called Data (E which is empty.

PLEASE help me!
I ahve ran antivirus, disk defrag, computer cleanup, done a lot I can think and uninstalled stupid programs!

Thanks and I will give +rep!

Use CCleaner as suggested before. Keep it anyway, as its handy to remove unnecessary startup items.

Is your machine a laptop?

Try upgrading the RAM to 4Gb.

The HDD in your PC is partitioned. You should move your music and pictures to the E: drive. It is kinda called Data for a reason. As a small point, keep your uni stuff on the E: drive too, as if your PC has a hidden recovery partition, and you somehow need it, some only clear the C: drive, and not any other partitions, therefore saving your data.

By any chance, is your computer a Toshiba? Our old Toshiba laptop was partitioned as Vista C: and Data E: drive too.

Do you leave anything plugged in while starting up the machine (external HDDs, external disk drives, USB sticks)? That could be slowing the machine down.

Could you post your system specs too, as that would help us a bit.

[AgnesIO]

I always use CCleaner and QuickStart up to disable programs that aren't necessary to run at startup, it saves loads of time!

You can actually use CCleaner to do that!

Tools
Startup

Has all the programs that run on startup!

[Laurensh1]

You can actually use CCleaner to do that!

Tools
Startup

Has all the programs that run on startup!

Yes, but it doesn't explain which ones can be turned off (for the program to be able to run or if they are needed). Or web pages where people can write their comments about it...