I know that you tried everything, but have your also tried using Microsoft Defender (Microsoft.com) or Ad-Aware, the personal edition, from (Lavasoftusa.com). These are free adware/spyware removal programs that would help you remove just about 99% of all hidden malware programs that could still be junking up your IE when trying to connect into the internet. I've used these several times on all my family's computers when they go to me for help with why their comptuer is sunning slower than snail mail.
If you install and ran these, and still run into slowness, you may have to save all files you need to have saved and pretty much re-install Windows from scratch. Then re-install eithr MS Defender or Ad-Aware so that it would help you keep your system clean. Note that these are not 'real-time' protection software, and you have to manually (or in Microsoft's case) auto-time it to run at a certain time to scan through your hard drive to clean out any and all malware that may get installed further on.
I hope that this helps alittle and good luck.
I'm looking for ideas that anyone may have to help my crawling computer. It's a powerhouse, Dell XPS gen 4 with a 3.8 Ghz Pentium 4 and 2 Gig of RAM. Recently it has begun to really slow down - it takes about 30 secs to open explorer for example... I have tried running counterspy for malware (nothing), Norton Utilities to defrag and clear junk (little improvement) and advanced system optimizer to optimize the registry (ditto).
Am I missing anything or am I facing a reinstall of Windows XP?
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