XP locking up every time I try to run something

[spacemonkey504]

What's up everyone:

I got an XP(Pro) machine that is acting really strange all of a sudden nothing is working right. Everytime I try to launch IE or OE I get an hour glass then nothing, same with any other programs (especially apps that are accessing the web, I do see the processes in the Manager for any app I attempt to open, but I can't physically see or use the programs). I'm doing a VS right now but I really don't think that's it. It seemed to me at first that the Explorer was taking all the CPU time Which made sense consider the programs that would open (before i would loose control of them) and act really choppy almost like I was running a older system (low RAM or Mem, etc.) If anyone has some good recomendations for figuring out what exactly is my problem please send some info, thanks.

[ardnelias]

It could be a Virus / Trojan / Spyware attack. Run a trojan scanner while you are disconnected from the net. Also run Ad-aware, Spybot S & D and Hijackthis tools to clean your system of any spyware / adware.

To see if the problem is hardware related - like the hdd having bad sectors - you can run a program such as Norton System Works or the plain old chkdsk /f to do a boot time check on all drives.