Windows 2000 suddenly running slowly

Hello,

Recently I bought a second machine with a Pentium4, 256 MB RAM and Windows 2000. It was running quite well for awhile; I downloaded or installed a few programs, but I didn't see any change. Yesterday, however, it started running much slower. Webpages take longer to load, and sometimes I get "Connection was refused when attempting to reach www.blahblah.blah" and have to try again. I did find that it's reporting that of the 256M of RAM, only 67M are available. So, clearly something is sucking up space...

I checked the Startup folder under the Start menu and removed everything unnecessary. Then I looked under system information, and found that in Software Environment, these programs are running at startup (other than NetAssistant, none of these appeared in the Startup folder under the Start menu):

MsnMsgr "c:\program files\msn messenger\msnmsgr.exe"
NetAssistant c:\progra~1\netass~1\bin\matcli.exe
Synchronization Manager mobsync.exe /logon
NeroFilterCheck c:\winnt\system32\nerocheck.exe
InCD c:\program files\ahead\incd\incd.exe
Motive SmartBridge c:\progra~1\netass~1\smartb~1\motivesb.exe
StandardInstall All Users
ccApp "c:\program files\common files\symantec shared\ccapp.exe "
URLLSTCK.exe c:\program files\norton internet security\urllstck.exe
SSC_UserPrompt c:\program files\common files\symantec shared\security center\usrprmpt.exe
PicasaNet "c:\program files\hello\hello.exe"

So, perhaps I'm assuming, but I figure these things running must be at least part of the problem. Anything Norton/Symantec probably needs to run. I know what Nero, InCD, NetAssistant, Motive SmartBridge are for, but I'm not sure if it will cause any problems with these applications if I remove their associated files from the startup programs. MSN Messenger and PicasaNet (hello.exe) have no need to run at startup in my mind (especially hello.exe, which I uninstalled yesterday as it is a stupid program...maybe it's absence/presence is causing the problem, who knows). Anyway, the major question here is...how do I prevent these things from running at startup? There appears to be no 'remove' or 'delete' option in System Information and I'm at a loss. I'm not very familiar with Windows 2000, obviously. If anyone has other ideas on why the RAM is so reduced and/or everything is so slow, I welcome them.

Thanks a bunch!

 

Startup Cop will give you good control over what happens at startup time.

Have you checked the system for spyware and virus problems?

 

Thanks for the reply. I'll look into Startup Cop. I hope it's not a virus or spyware issue, because I am running Norton Internet Security 2005, updating regularly. Do let me know if you think this is insufficient...

 

slow windows

My machine was very slow some weeks ago. In my case the cure was to install ad_aware, run this software tvice and then that computer seemed to work with normal speed (Win 98 SE)

Another time the PC run normal when doing internal work - was slow during 2 days when I accessed the web. The cause was that the internet acced provider had technical problems