Windows XP slow in opening applications

[phyxsius]

One of my computers is very slow in opening an application. Here's the thing, after I logged on into the network in my office, the startup is slower than before. On top of that, when I open an application, say, Microsoft Word, it'll take me around 1 minute to open it but after I got them running, everything was smooth again. Just the beginning of running the application that slows the entire system down and I couldn't click on anything (desktop, taskbar) AND the funny part is, when I open the Task Manager, there was no congestion or anything (System Idle Process mainly in 95% and above, sometimes 99%). Besides, I only have around 35 processes running in the background.

Could it be SPAM? I doubt so because the server and the computer has Symantec Antivirus and SPAM protection and they're both up to date.

What do you think guys?

[bartonc]

One of my computers is very slow in opening an application. Here's the thing, after I logged on into the network in my office, the startup is slower than before. On top of that, when I open an application, say, Microsoft Word, it'll take me around 1 minute to open it but after I got them running, everything was smooth again. Just the beginning of running the application that slows the entire system down and I couldn't click on anything (desktop, taskbar) AND the funny part is, when I open the Task Manager, there was no congestion or anything (System Idle Process mainly in 95% and above, sometimes 99%). Besides, I only have around 35 processes running in the background.

Could it be SPAM? I doubt so because the server and the computer has Symantec Antivirus and SPAM protection and they're both up to date.

What do you think guys?

I've seen this on machines with too little memory. In one case, Fast User Switching option was on (more than on log-in in memory at one time). In any case, those 35 processes probably take up over 200MB of RAM (as seen in the Perfomance tab of Task Manager) and some of it must be moved to the disk before a large app like Work can load if you have less than 512MB installed.
Otherwise, all I can suggest is defragment the drive and other "Disk Cleanup" chores.

[Banfa]

Bartons suggestion is good. When you are starting word check the hard disk light on your computer. If it is on fairly solidly there is a good chance that Windows is having to increase the swap file size and swap some other programs memory to disk to provide enough memory space to run word.

The are only 2 ways round this

1. Install more memory

2. Run fewer programs