I recently came into possession of a Dell Inspiron 6000; before me, it was owned by a friend.

When I first got it, it was very reliable, very fast, and very quiet. A few months later, and now it seems to be running slower and the fan is now constantly on -- not extremely loud, but like I said, it used to be dead-quiet. I downloaded a few free anti-adware programs, which enabled me to get rid of a few malware programs on my computer (there weren't many, though), checked for viruses that weren't there, and I also ran Defrag, but the computer is much less RESPONSIVE than it used to be (which ultimately makes me FEEL like a failure as computer-owner).

I notice the computer is really slow at start-up. When I'm running a few different programs (like I usually have Windows Media Player, INTERNET Explorer, and Word Processor all running at once), the computer is pretty slow and unresponsive. However, if I'm running just Internet Explorer using multiple tabs for different sites, it runs generally okay. So I basically have two main questions:

1.) What more can I do to try to make my computer RUN as fast and as responsively as it did only a mere few months ago?

and

2.) Is it normal for my computer's fan to be running constantly like this? (It should also be NOTED that I downloaded a program that allows me to check on the CPU temperature, and when I only have on program running, the average temp is usually around 28 degrees C, but higher when I have more programs running.)

Thanks in advance,
Joshok can we get some more info? like os and hardware specs and what software you used?



unlovedwarrior