Running programs

[sprayermick]

I am running Win XP and over the last week or so my laptop seems to take ages to do any thing so I assumed it had got a virus from somewhere, I have run Malwarebytes several times and it comes up with nothing, somebody said it may just be a case of several programs running at once from start up but how do I check what is running and how do I turn them off ?

[ChuckFickens]

http://netsquirrel.co...nfig/msconfig_xp.html

[sprayermick]

Thanks ChuckFickens I will give that a go and see if it helps.

[Old_Geezer]

How is your hard disk space ? Plenty left ?
Is it worth a defragmentation ?