windows extremely slowdown

Open the Run box and type msconfig OK.  Tick the button for Diagnostic Start up and reboot. If the time to start is reduced considerably, then some items in your Start up list are slowing things down. If this is the case, open msconfig again and tick the Selective Startup button. Click the Startup tab and go through the list and untick everything except your Security items. You will probably find that BT have put half a dozen items in there which are not really required, together with numerable other items from other installations which are not really required. Restart and compare the startup time. If you find that something is not working properly, just run msconfig again and retick it's item.

I would also advise you to uninstall Norton and use a lighter progam. Norton are famous for bring a PC to it's knees, epecially the older versions. The free versions of AVG8 and Avast do a very good job at catching viruii and Comodo and PCTools are very good free firewalls.

If you decide to uninstall Norton use their tool to remove it as it's uninstaller leaves bits all over the place. Available from http://service1.symantec.com/Support/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039

okay, i tried it and it does make small difference,but start up is not the problem and is much and such the same as it has been, problem only seems to be when i try to use internet explorer then web pages seem to take ages to load, sorry if i did not make it clear in my first post

I don't know how I managed it but my first post to your query was in reply to a completely different thread.

You probably wondered what the reference to BT was about, but I think my second post covers what you need.

TomD

thanks both of you so far, after typing into cmd prompt i found i have 32 connections running, i have already run adaware and spybot which found a trojan and a heap of spyware, i also found out my security centre had been disabled so i have reenabled it [ probably why i never noticed my antivirus running out] i will probably get rid of norton but after using it for years trouble free and just paying 56 pound for next year i am loathe [ and too tight fisted] to get rid of it yet, i know and appreciate what you are saying about it using resources but in all the time i have used it it has never caused me to run this slow, i have tried clicking on spyware link you have posted but cannot seem to access it ie two green bars at bottom of screen after 5 minutes so i gave up but will try again and keep you posted

ok tried and downloaded spyware cleaner but no better but running in safe mode with networking is letting me run at normal speed, any suggestions where to go now

I definitely looks like you are infected. You could try downloading http://download.hijackthis.eu/HJTInstall.exe and create a log. Unfortunately the forum HJ section seems to have died, so what I would recommend is going here-

http://www.hijackthis.de/

and paste your log into the box and see what it says.

If this does not help, then I am afraid a full format and re-install may be required.

TomD

After running and recommending AVG for years, I found that the latest version, although it looks good, caused far too many problems and have ditched it. It has a problem with updating on some machines, it told me I did not have enough memory to update, not just occasionally, but almost every time it tried. I think Grisoft may be trying to push users on to their 'paid for' product as nothing seemed to be being done about it. Some find it is still OK but I didn't, so I am now using Avast4 Free, it seems to be working well and updates with no problems. If you do have problems with AVG, try Avast.

TomD