Can you help please, computer extremely slow?

Scan for viruses. There are a few good, free virus detection programs like AVG.

Add memory if it’ll take more (it’s cheap nowadays). Delete unneeded applications (the hard drive may be getting full). Do check for viruses, as @Luffle says. Those three things alone are almost sure to speed you up.

@Austinlad
@Luffle
Thank you both for your input. I forgot to mention that I have scanned for viruses. I have McAfee running on this computer. Is it a good one? Other than that I guess I could try adding more memory. Is that something I can physically do myself Austinlad?

Yes, you can, but you want to be careful not to create any static electricity. First, check to see what the max memory is and how much is installed. I’m betting it can take more. In Windows, there’s a feature buried in Accessories>System Tools called System Information. That will give you this info.

@Austinlad Thanks a million! I’ll be checking that out shortly. :)

@Austinlad This is what found in the system information. If you don’t mind please advise me on this: Total physical memory 512.00 MB
Available physical memory 14.89 MB
Total virtual memory 2.00 GB
Available virtual memory 1.96 GB

I’ll answer your question offline.

Look into re-installing Windows, esp. if there are not many programs you need on this computer. Afterwards, re-install only the programs you need.

McAfee? Excuse me, I have to go vomit….

Personally, I use Avira (much higher ratings and also free) but there are other AV programs that are also better than McAfee, like Avast!

If you only have 512MB of RAM then there is most of your issue right there. WinXP takes up at least 600MB by itself, so you are making a lot of use of virtual memory (which is literally 1,000 times slower). When I had a system fry a DIMM and had to run XP on that little RAM while I waited for parts to come in, I noticed almost that degree of slowdown. You really need at least 768MB to run WinXP and 1GB if you plan to run any applications (like Firefox) in addition to XP; 2GB is about where you want to be with WinXP unless you restrict yourself to basic stuff like web surfing.

RAM is cheaper than replacing a system. I can pick it up for $14/GB right down the street and I am sure that that is not the best price out there. It’s easy to install, or you can get a friend to do it if you’re afraid, but it will help a lot.