Slow PC and just poor

Well this could be several reasons:

1. Check you don't have more then ONE Virus scanner, (more then one they will fight each other for files)
2. Check for Viruses, sometime we get machines in and Norton/McAfee or AVG is on them and they still have viruses, We use Sophos for Business and for Home use I use AVG.
3. Your hard disk could be fragmented. Try and de-fragment the hard disk
4. Do you have enough RAM or Hard disk Space - people buy machines install software more and more then it get slower and slower.
5. Some updates might not have installed correctly! make sure your up to date.
6. Is the computer slow at certain times? (When you turn it on, slow for 2 hours then, OK?) This could be some software scanning your machine - just change the time for it to scan.

The best tool to tidy up a PC is !cleanup (written by Steven Gould) its free and WILL remove lots of rubbish and all temp files. One one customer we used it and cleared 15Gb.

The other tool I would recommend is Spybot-Search and Destroy (again its free from safer-networking) see my spyware.

My RAM Recommendations are:

1GB Ram XP
2GB Ram Vista

your Hard disk depends on how much your going to store on it, I would start now with 160GB minimum, I Know we used to supply 80GB (but not for the last 9 months).

Both Tools run fine one Home machines, and work machines, (XP no problem) Vista run as Admin.

That that for now.