Laptop keeps freezing

[Lirael]

I have a Dell Inspiron 1420 running Vista Home Premium and it's running ridiculously slow and it keeps freezing!
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T5450 @ 1.66GHz
2.00GB RAM

I have no idea what's wrong with it; I've done scans using Avira, CC Cleaner and Ad-Aware and they've found nothing. I have also done a hijackthis scan and deleted a couple of items, but it didn't help. The laptop is fairly new, I got it in March of 2008 (last year).

The only thing new I have recently downloaded is BitTorrent.

Please help!

 

[Lirael]

Help please~

 

[AudioVayne]

In safe mode, go Start > Run > msconfig

click on the 'startup' tab and uncheck everything except your antivirus.

If it starts up sweet, download and run a program called 'Malwarebytes'...

 

[Lirael]

Thanks for the reply, but it didn't help any. The computer did start up nice and smoothly, but I still keep freezing and running slow.
Malwarebytes didn't find anything.

 

[Lirael]

Oh, I've noticed too that my computer get's a lot worse when I run MSN messenger...

 

[AudioVayne]

How much and how many sticks of RAM does your machine have?

If there are 2 sticks, try one stick at a time and see if that makes a difference

If only 1 stick download the UBCD 4.1.1 (ultimate Boot CD) from another machine, and burn it to CD.
Test the RAM and HDD (they're easy enough to find), if they show up errors then that's your culprit.

 

[Lirael]

I didn't try doing that AudioVayne, but I did take off a lot of my visual display settings and it helped a ton. I also did some virus scans with another scanner and it seems to be working now.

Thanks for the replies.