Please disconnect from the imtenet and disable spyware soctor. See if there is any significant difference (usually you get a disable option when right-cklicking the program icon in the task bar at the bottom of the screen). When I talk about an idling computer I mean a computer in which all initial processes were already ended. For example, if your antimalware softwares are set to perform a scan after bootup and if the scan is of all files, it can take a very long time until everything quiets down. In "real" idle, when you look at task manager almost all processes should show 0% cpu usage and system idle shoyld be around 98%.
If you suspect that IE 7 started the slowdown try to ununstall it in Add/Remove programs in control manager. This should roll you back to IE 6.
Just forgot: The blue page you got with PageDefrag is all you are supposed to get. It disappears very quickly if no defrag problems exist in page and system files. It doe's not perform full defrag of the HD.
Edited by The Skeptic, 12 March 2007 - 11:17 PM.