Programs open up very slow

[ua540]

I am runni ng Win XP, Processor 4400+, 1gb ram, 122gb free space.
When I open a program such as word it takes forever to open. I have run scan disk, have defrag but the problem still exists. Can someone help me to clean up my computer or tell me what to do.
Thanks, Andy

[Computer CPR]

I doubt the problem is due to just slowness.  It sounds like a service or something else is hanging up where it shouldn't.  Go into your computer management window (right click on "My computer" and click on "manage") right after opening Word and check the application and system event logs under "event viewer" to see if errors are being noted in there.  Also next time before you launch word bring up your task manager (ctrl+shift+esc) and click on the processes tab, sort them by "CPU" (this is done by clicking on CPU once or twice, "System Idle" should be the top process) and see if any one process hogs a particularly large part of the CPU during the entirety of the time it takes to actually launch word. 

[Broni]

Welcome aboard 

Was it always like that?
Get CCleaner: http://www.ccleaner.com/

[ianbell]

Are you runing AVG? If so try disableing it and see what happens with Word - I find AVG very invasive and slows down my system in all respects a great deal.

[soybean]

I'm using AVG and I use Office 2003 and I've never had a problem with AVG causing computer sluggishness.

How do Excel and other Office apps work?  Is this problem just with Word?

[patio]

Are you runing AVG? If so try disableing it and see what happens with Word - I find AVG very invasive and slows down my system in all respects a great deal.

This is inaccurate at best and a less than factual observation...
Please be careful throwing out generalisations such as the above without any documentation to back it up.

In the last report published there was only one AV that had a smaller resource/memory footprint than AVG and it certainly wasn't a free anti-virus program.

If you need the details PM me.

[Computer CPR]

I need a bucket of water over here cause we have a Patio in flames!