Octopus Overlords

So recently, my computer is being an anal cunt lately, mainly with virtual memory. The paging file keeps increasing, which means programs are loading way too slow. And just today, Firefox closed and I temporarly lost my start menu, which could only be recovered by restarting. Before that, I tried to reopen Firefox and a window opened up saying that it couldn't access it cause I didn't the right access, or something or other. I'm currently running a dinosaur (by todays standards):

AMD Athlon 900 MHz
20G HD
GeForce 2MX 32 MB
256MB RAM
Windows XP

Software:
Norton Internet Security/Anti-Virus 2005
Webroot Spyware

Both of the software programs regularly perform sweeps, and I haven't come up with any viruses lately, but the same 20 traces of spyware keep coming up (not sure what ones specifically). 15 get quarintined, while the other 5 just do not. I've gotten rid of just about everything that I don't need on this computer, which includes games. The only reason I use this is for AIM, Livejournal, this site and a couple others, and the 2.5 gigs of music. I'm not sure what's causing the horrendous slowdown, whether it's the those 5 pieces of spyware I can't get rid of, the lack of RAM coupled with the aging graphics card (or just RAM), or what.

In other words: help.

It sounds like it just needs a maintenance reformat. Sometimes a couple of hours with a Windows disk is actually signficantly easier than manually running down a horde of problems one by one.

The Evil Dead wrote:So recently, my computer is being an anal cunt lately, mainly with virtual memory. The paging file keeps increasing, which means programs are loading way too slow. And just today, Firefox closed and I temporarly lost my start menu, which could only be recovered by restarting. Before that, I tried to reopen Firefox and a window opened up saying that it couldn't access it cause I didn't the right access, or something or other. I'm currently running a dinosaur (by todays standards):

AMD Athlon 900 MHz
20G HD
GeForce 2MX 32 MB
256MB RAM
Windows XP

Software:
Norton Internet Security/Anti-Virus 2005
Webroot Spyware

Both of the software programs regularly perform sweeps, and I haven't come up with any viruses lately, but the same 20 traces of spyware keep coming up (not sure what ones specifically). 15 get quarintined, while the other 5 just do not. I've gotten rid of just about everything that I don't need on this computer, which includes games. The only reason I use this is for AIM, Livejournal, this site and a couple others, and the 2.5 gigs of music. I'm not sure what's causing the horrendous slowdown, whether it's the those 5 pieces of spyware I can't get rid of, the lack of RAM coupled with the aging graphics card (or just RAM), or what.

In other words: help.

Sounds like there is some spyware getting around what you are running. Perhaps some trouble programs that some don't classify as spyware, like new.net

I would install and run Adaware SE followed by Spybot S&D both are available on download.com the top 2 downloads last I checked. Then if you are still having problems run hijack this and post the log.