So I have WINDOWS Vista and a Dell ... Inspiron530s but I bought it about 2 years ago. At first it wasn't so slow, but recently it's occasionally gotten as slow as the computer which we owned for 6 or 7 years at that time. We use Spybot search and destroy and spyware doctor and both aren't finding anything serious. What actually happens is this.. just a few symptoms

-an online game i play doesn't load up (its java) and then it says not responding and I have to resort to unplugging it or powering down and restarting computer

-ms word and other programs randomly won't COME up (the ms word loadup screen appeared and then stayed that way, same happened to spybot search and destroy)

- interenet comes up very slow and navigation isn't very good

-some programs suddenly stop responding

And other THINGS LIKE this... I have no idea what the problem could be to be honest but if there's any typical solutions without paying someone it'd be greatly APPRECIATED When's the last time you did the housekeeping on that machine ? ?
Run Disk Cleanup from Control Panel...
Then defrag...let it finish...
Then re-boot and from a command prompt run chkdsk /r...
Let us know...all that stuff had been done

wait no the cmd part i cant do it because it says i dont have sufficient privliedges, but what does it doIt checks your HDD for errors...have someone log you on as Admin...