major lag in computer operations

[seawolves121]

i have an intel 4 processor w/ 512 ram and 40 gigs of memory. all of a sudden my entire computer start lagging when it does its operations, like when i scroll down a page it takes so long to go down and i can't watch movies because the frame rate is so damn slow. this never happened before, just started to act up like this recently. is there anyone who knows how to fix this? your help would be very much appericated

 

[wlpsyp]

Do you have anti-virus software installed? Does it do this at a certain time or any time? I seen this before and it was because the AV software was downloading the new definitions in the background.

Bill

 

[seawolves121]

i do have norton installed and it does download new definitions every now and then in the background, but this happens all the time not just every now and then.

 

[bullhlms]

Use the Task manager (ctl+alt+del) to see whats taking the time.

 

[BlackburnKL]

Is the hard drive light on nearly all the time when this is happening? I've also seen this when a hard drive is beginning to fail and it is having some trouble reading from and writing to the hard drive. BlackburnKL