pc gettin slower

[M.Jones]

hey i was wonderin if ram can burn out or anything. I play world or warcraft and i have noticed over the past couple of months that my preformance has gone downhill very bad, stuff loads slower then it use to and if it loads at all. WoW is about the only program i have on this pc, i use microsoft antispyware tool, run checks every night and it never finds anything and i used a virus scanner nortons and it doesnt find anything either, any help would be great thanks

 

[Nodsu]

I'd say the biggest slowdown is caused by the Norton software

Please refer to the Security forums here on TS on how to use Hijackthis and use the online virus scanner at http://www.trendmicro.com to scan your computer.

 

[wlknaack]

Over time, by installing/uninstalling programs, surfing the net, downloading from the net, not properly preventing and/or detecting and removing spyware, malware, trojans, viruses, etc., and not keeping your temp files, registry, etc. clean, things can get messy with your operating system, and performance will suffer. As you can see, there can be multiple reasons for your loss of performance. If the performance loss has been reasonably fast, and dramatic, Nodsu's suggestion is the best way to start. Having just Microsoft AntiSpyware and Norton AntiVirus is not sufficient. You didn't mention if you have a Firewall, but I'll assume you do. I suggest you research the following:

1) Freeware programs which help prevent infection, like SpyWare Guard, Spyware Blaster, Win Patrol, Spybot Search & Destroy, etc..

2) Freeware programs which detect and remove infections, like Ad-Aware Personal SE, Spybot Search & Destroy, A2, CWShredder, HijackThis, F-Secure Blacklight, etc..

3) Freeware cleaner programs which clean up the Registry and System Internals which are faulty, and clean out the temp files, like CCleaner, Spybot Search & Destroy, etc..

In addition, you should defrag you HDD(s) if you haven't already done so, and check and adjust the size of your pagefile to make sure you are not over-utilizing your RAM because your pagefile is too small relative to the amount of RAM you have.