I don't know if this is the correct place to post this but I am in dire need of some serious help!
My laptop is just over a year old (purchased in June 2010). The specs are by no means bad (4GB RAM, i5 processor 430M) and there is plenty of space remaining on my Hard Drive (over 500GB). I am having a hard time understanding why my laptop is running so ridiculously slow; opening Internet Explorer takes up to five minutes, and even opening programs like Microsoft Word takes several minutes. The computer constantly freezes and programs are always "not responding".
I have run two full system scans and have only returned one item (a java exploit, which I removed). This did not help at all.
I have also run disk cleanup and deleted all unnecessary files, as well as defragmented my C drive (both of these did not result in any huge difference).
Recently, when booting my computer, a message appeared that said I need to check my disk for consistency. I ran ChkDsk and this also did not help very much (Windows notified me that some files were corrupted, and these files were fixed as far as I know).
I have no reason to believe that I have any malware or viruses, as the system scans have not returned anything.
Does anyone have any explanation as to why my computer is running so slowly?
I do not have many programs installed (I am a student, so I just have the basic iTunes, Microsoft Office, bitTorrent, Dungeon Siege 3, etc.)
I am most certainly not pushing my laptop to its full potential, so why is it running so slowly?
Any suggestions are appreciated,
Eric