Taking too long to open any program

I've recently been getting this problem. Like when the computer starts up and I login and click on IE or any other program it takes a really long time for it to open. I got some registry cleaner after I read some forums and I used it and my computers been fine. Today I'm having the same propem, I've used the registry cleaner and it's still like this. Like if I click on IE from the quick launch bar it wont open up until a while passes but if I right click on a link right now and choose open in new window and it will open. If I try and open the task manager that wont open either, it takes a long time for that to open.

I'm guessing it's not a hard drive problem, what else could it be? I haven't installed anything new besides the registry cleaner which I did because of this problem.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Well, there are a great many things that can cause a slowdown like that. The simplest thing to do is to run any antivirus/spyware programs you have to check if it's some form of malware that's causing this. Also, if we could know some specs of your computer, it would help to see if you need to upgrade any hardware as well.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Checked, dont have any viruses or anything of that sort.

I got a Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.13ghz
1GB RAM
Windows Media Center
2 160GB hard drives, and 1 400GB hard drive
NVIDIA Geforce 7900 GS

I dont think I would need to upgrade any hardware since it's been fine all this while, I'm just recently having these problems.

Edit: My Documents was not responding so I clicked on end task and my taskbar is gone, thats another thing I'm getting these days. When ever I click on end task a certain thing the tasbar goes away. Also I used that registry cleaner and it showed 0 errors, I decided to use uniblue registry booster and it shows 192 errors. It only fixed 15 since it's the trial, which I gotta download the full version now.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Im not really sure what type of issue this would be, but i do have a suggestion as far as the reg cleaners go. Go to this site . Download the latest version. Use this from now on. It's free and a hell of a lot better than any of those other pay cleaner programs. Let us know how many errors you get running that program.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Well I decided to reformat my computer today (using my PS3's browser right now) hoping it would fix the problem, didn't have much to lose just about 90GB of stuff which I backed up. Now during the intallation of Windows XP Media Center it's frozen many times. I called Dell they said to reformat one more time and then to call them up again which is what I'm doing right now. I did a hard drive diagnostics test last night and there wasn't any problem. So could this be cause the RAM is going bad or something?

The guy at Dell said that if it is the RAM and the way to test that out is to remove each stick and do a fresh install with only one of them running each time. I just hope it's not some bullshit thing of Dell, I dont know about their customer service but I've had warranty with Circuit City on my last compute and they used to bull shit all the time. They made me spend 30$ on a recovery disc when nothing was wrong with mine cause they didnt know how to solve the problem.

I was speaking idiomatically.

You should be able to test the RAM without uninstalling Windows each time. Try just taking all of your RAM out except for one stick and see how Windows runs with that. Then try putting in another stick (in the same slot). If it's still not better, try putting a stick of RAM into a different slot. If none of that works, then I don't think it would be the RAM (unless all of it fried at once).

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Thanks RacinReaver, I'm gonna have to do that once Windows XP installs. During the installation I got an error saying it couldnt locate some file all I remember is it ended with ".jp_". So I called Dell and had to deal with a smart ass telling me shit that I know nothing about, about some image restore or some shit which he said is quicker than reformating which doesn't make sense cause if I'm having a hard time intalling XP what good is that gonna do? Then he was bullshitting about viruses and how I dont know a thing and he'd be able to prove me wrong like he proved other customers wrong. I pretty much got shit help from him, he puts me on hold for 5 minutes saying he'll check back if I'm done with formatting when I dont know how he expected it to be done in 5 minutes, clearly proving he doesn't know shit. Yea I'm totally loving Dell's support right now.

Anyways before formatting again I checked in the bios setup thing and in the ram it displayed the total as 1GB so does that mean it's fine? Or even if something is going on with it will it still show 1GB?

Edit: Oh and the guy from Dell also said something about me screwing up a partition which is why I'm getting an error or am I'm having a hard time installing XP again. I'm not that good when it comes to things like this but uhh it doesn't matter does it, if I'm gonna be doing a fresh install anyways? He asked if there were 3 partitions and I said no just one cause I've never seen my compute having more than 1 partition when I'm reformatting.

FELIPE NO