Computer running slowly all across the board

Hello,

I bought this computer in December last year. It's a Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo 600 with a Pentium 4 processor running at 3.2 GHz, 1024 MB RAM and a 256 MB Radeon 9800 PRO.

My problem is that after a while, the computer has started running incredibly slowly for a computer of its caliber. For example, I score around 3500 3DMarks when other users with equivalent (and sometimes inferior) systems score around 6000 3DMarks. Any game based on the Unreal engine experiences periodical slowdown, jumping from framerates in the mid-hundreds to single-digit figures every number of minutes, and sometimes, even Windows XP runs slowly.

I've tried calling my tech support company, and they suggest that something might be wrong with the fan, causing the processor to overheat. Now, I've tried cleaning the fan (with a vacuum cleaner, mind you) and running with an open case, even going as far as to place a table fan to blow extra air at the processor. However, the problem still persists, and I cannot for the love of anything figure out why. Maybe it is the fan, maybe it's something else, I just can't figure out what.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I formatted as late as three days ago.

Yeah, I did. I actually noticed that at this LAN that I was at in July, that my Radeon was running at AGP 1x. So I got the motherboard drivers, it was back up at 8x. Unfortunately, that didn't solve the problem at all.

I do have a load of processes running, but even as such, my CPU usage never exceeds 15%.

There are many programs which could tell you how fast your CPU is running - e.g. Sisoft Sandra - and these could be used to see if it is throttling down due to overheating like the tech support guys say. (but I doubt it)

Sounds a lot like Spyware/Adware or virus type stuff.

Download the latest versions of Adaware & spybot to check, and make sure your AV is up to date.

I recently did a fresh install of XP, and in the 10 minutes it took me to get firewall and antivirus stuff up & running, I picked up 6 viruses and 5 different adware infections. Nothing too hard to root out fortunately, but it goes to show how quickly these things can happen.

Also make sure you remove ALL unecessary background stuff & services... if you have a system tray that's full of junk it's not going to help matters...

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Epox 8RDA+ V1.1 w/ Custom NB HS
Summer's here! so ease off the overclock...
XP1700+ @166x12 (~2Ghz), 1.45 Vcore
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