My sole PC is playing up, freezing, slow running etc. etc. etc.

Now the sole reason for having it is for Phoenix and my wife uses it for email and a bit of browsing.

I've done the virus, ads, registry cleaning things and it still does it. It did play up once before which was found to be the graphics card overheating because it's fan had died. I've been advised that as it's a PC and has run for about 4 years without a system reinstall this is probably the problem(Even though my main Mac is 8 years old and has never had a reinstall and still ticks over nicely thanks )

I have no disc for this PC as it was 2nd hand and so i am looking for ideas for sorting it. A new one is out of the question, it runs Phoenix without a hiccup so I don't need a new one nor can I afford. Where can I get XP Pro with a valid licence at a reasonable price?

Don't say eBay as there seem to be so many different products on there my head is spinning

Have you done a defrag at any point in this 4 year period?
If not click start then search defrag and it will bring it up for you then just click it, with a 4 year period though it could take some time.

How much ram do you have in your pc? What processor do you have?

You also need to edit your post as I think it was meant to say 'it runs Phoenix without a hiccup'

Yeah I've done it all including defrag.

You are correct, I meant without, duly edited

To be honest if you only browse the web and your not downloading viruses via unsafe sites ie music sites and torrents etc I honestly don't know, I would only do a fresh install once all other avenue's have been explored, it may be a simple case of too many apps running at same time and having to turn some off. is it slow when using Phoenix or all the time? If only slow when using sim then it could be your graphics card needs updating, if slow all time after apps i would look at ram and processor, if you want a copy of XP I have one (XP Black is a cracked copy but updates etc and no serial needed) as I now use Vista (legal copy), unless you have a Dell pc then I can send you an OEM copy of Vista

Main problems are it is slow to open programs and often the whole machine just locks up. It runs Phoenix fine not at ridiculous frame rates but plenty fast enough to make it feel as real as it needs to be...

It may just be some crap that has been downloaded but I've no idea how to check for that or how to get rid of it without buggering the machine up totally!!!

what you could try (among a million other things):
- open the task manager (Ctrl-Alt-Delete, "Task manager" button in the popup).
- kill most of the processes in the "processes" tab (right-click, End process tree).
- there are some you shouldn't kill - find by trial and error (explorer is one)
- try if performance is better
- after a reboot, everything is the same as before => little risk to do any damage this way.

a more permanent solution is to go to control panel, "add/remove software". Uninstall everything you don't use.

The slowness is more how long it takes to get a program up and running which is not the end of the world the biggest problem is the freezing.

Think it only has 512Mb of Ram but it used to run ok on 256, i upped it to 512 to make Phoenix work a bit better.

512Mb isnt a great deal but XP should run with it...

click start button, run, type in taskmgr and hit enter
this brings up task manager
click the processes tab
click the CPU column title to sort by cpu usage
with nothing else running (or running but not working hard) you should see System Idle Process as the highest ~ 99

If there is anything else using up lots of CPU you can click it in the Image Name column and click the End Process button at the bottom.
Click Yes to confirm the termination of the process (don't terminate explorer.exe as this is the process for the desktop/menu bar as well as Windows Explorer windows... (its not the end of the world as you can restart the process in applications tab by clicking the New Task button and typing explorer)

If you do have a process that is hogging CPU you can search for what it might be in google...

hope that might help a little

512 is limited, but as said xp should run ok, if you can provide more details about the pc, i.e processor i might be able to help with more ram, maybe even a better processor, just depends what you have. What anti virus software are you using ?, and you said you did a sweep for spyware, i find cc cleaner the best. if its not the software or a virus, it sounds like something is choking your memory IMHO, so i would follow the advise above for shutting down running processes. Sorry i cant add anything more, hope this helps.

Hi.Get inside the case and inspect the cpu heatsink and look to see if all the blades are choked with crap it more than likely is.Take the fan off and clean it out using a vaccume cleaner and small paint brush or something like.In many cases this can make a huge difference.

Dave.