[John Rogers]

If you are not comfortable with editing the registry then I'd say stay away. One thing you can do is run the utility "msconfig" by using start -> run then type msconfig and click okay. Under the "startup" tab you can look at what is loaded and then uncheck those that are not needed. If you are not sure then you can use a Google search to see what they are. You can do the same thing with the "services" tab and then do a restart to see if things get better.

I had a computer student earlier this year who kept complaining his laptop was TOO SLOW and we took a look and he had a music sharing program running that was taking 30 to 40% CPU time which is monumental and he had no idea where it came from....... We found it, deleted it and also all DLLs and registry entries and he has been happy since.