Hey guys, I bought a Toshiba laptop in mid 2005, has Windows XP, 1.5Ghz processor, 512mb of RAM and 40gb HDD. It was a good computer and I've never had any problems until 2007. I messed up the computer after I accidentally downloaded a virus, doing some BAD registry fixes and probably a component overheat, and proceeded to take it to a shop and have someone look at it. They suggest I should reformat so I left the computer at their hands, not knowing they were going to use a pirated version of XP to reformat it. After I took my laptop back home I tested it by opening many programs at once, and saw a significant decrease in speed.

After a few more reformats during that year, here I am with a very slow laptop at my hands. It would take 5 minutes to boot up to the welcome screen! After that, everytime I want to open up an application, say Firefox, the mouse would lag and other programs would come to a brief standstill until Firefox opens up. And I could only run about 5 to 6 WINDOWS at once without making the computer come to a standstill. But my computer has only 36 processes running (a LOT less then the 50+ processes when I first bought it), and only about 9 or so STARTUP items.

I am considering a good clean reformat of a real Windows XP copy, but I'm not sure it would fix the problem. So if anybody could help, I would really appreciate it Quote

I am considering a good clean reformat of a real Windows XP copy