Hello,
I'm having a slowness problem with my laptop. Its a Toshiba Satellite 1.3ghz 
with ~500mb ram, XP home sp2. I was having some general slowness and applied 
some of the free reg cleaners and things got significantly better, but I'm 
still having a very specific slow down problem.

When I click on a web link in an email, it takes up to one minute for it to 
open. In the meantime, it looks like my Outlook Express is hung up. I can't 
do anything else in email, but I can go to start and open something else. I 
can even go and open the browser and type in the web address and 'beat' the 
clicking of the link to the web site. I've switched to Firefox browser, 
which has drastically speeded up my surfing, but it has not changed this 
issue.

A similar problem is when I go into my documents and click on a file, like a 
word doc. It can take a full 2 minutes for that to open. However, if I open 
Word first, then find the document and open it, it goes very quickly. Same 
deal as the internet links, while I'm waiting, I can go ahead and open word 
and locate the file before the original click operation completes and also 
during this wait, the My Documents or File Explorer window appears to hang 
until the file opens. This delay after click happens with other files types 
and programs as well, but word docs are the most extreme example.

I'm using Avira antivirus, but had the same problem when I had AVG. I 
thought it was avg related, because that program can be resource hungry, but 
no change. A system scan is not happening during these problems. During the 
'waiting period', there is no sign that the needed program is launching. If 
I open the task manager window, the requested program does not show in the 
application list until the wait is over and it starts to launch. Outlook 
Express shows 'not responding' during the wait, but returns to normal after 
the link finally opens.

My system is recently defragged, virus and spyware free. I borrowed a 500 mb 
memory strip from my other laptop and saw no improvement. If I have the 
system performance window open, during the 'waiting period', I see no change 
in cpu usage. It stays around 4 to 7%. It will rise to 100% for a second or 
so when the selected operation finally gets around to happening. Hard drive 
has 30gb (out of 60gb) free. System performance settings at at default. In 
other respects, the computer is fine. Menus pop up quickly, programs run 
fine. Any ideas? Thank you. -Nick 

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