A friend has a Compaq Presario, 2.4 GHz Athlon, 256M RAM that runs very slow.  Takes over 5 minutes to boot up, all program loading is similarly slow.  The list of programs under Startup doesn't show anything significant, but I haven't yet run "What's Running". It is running Symantec NAV.  I have run Spyware doctor and quarantined a lot of spyware, but it still runs slow.  It does have Wild Tangent (spyware?) that I haven't yet removed (just printed the removal procedures).  Can that be the problem? What other measures should I take to improve performance, short of clearing the HD and starting all over.

                         PCBUILD's List Owners:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                       Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>