Sluggish PC - What Should I Do?

Hii friends.

I have a PC with the following configuration:

Windows XP Professional (5.1.2600) Service Pack 2
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU E2140 @ 1.60 Ghz
L2 cache: 32 KB
memory: 1016 MB

Recently, it has been working at a very sluggish speed and hangs very often. Often, as soon as I start up, the desktop items do not respond until I restart.

Sometimes, I need to restart my PC a number of times before I can do any work.

My startup items include:

H/PC Connection Agent (For connection to internet)
ctfmon.exe
PC Tools Firewall
AVG Antivirus
Diskeeper Defragmenter
Threatfire

I tried using the following tools to improve my PC performance but all in vain:

Ccleaner
Windows Care
Eusing Registry Cleaner
Glary Utilities
TuneUp Utilities 2008

Since I am not an expert when it comes to computing, I though of posting it here so that I can know how to solve my problem.
Any help will by greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance !

there can be a lot of reason for slow down...

one option is to create a new user account from cpanel and move all your desktop/mydocuments to your new account, delete the older one.

I have tried this shortcut in some systems and found the system to be more responsive and faster(sometimes almost as same as new installation)

^^^ I use only 1 account (the administrator account)

So, even if I create a new one, I won't be able to delete the older one as the admin account can't be deleted.

no issue...create a new user account just dump the older one..normally administrator wont be noticable @ login..else use TweakUI Power Toy for Windows XP to hide the admin account.

^^^ Thanks.

I'll do that if I don't find any way to get rid of my problems.

For now, I am looking for some effective way to fix all my problems in the same account itself.

In task manager, check which process is consuming too many resources

Try uninstalling a few things, software.

Keep only one antivirus AVG or threatfire, the two will not work well together (may be thats the reason of sluggishness !!)

U know what, sometimes upgrading Windows does the trick. ( takes time, but works)

iatb.gourav said:
^^^ Thanks.

I'll do that if I don't find any way to get rid of my problems.

For now, I am looking for some effective way to fix all my problems in the same account itself.

over a period of time windows os becomes incompetent and hostile
but trust me this is the shortest and effective way for resolve this.

before I used to run similar softwares for registry cleaning, defragment, startup removal, and so on...the difference these tricks would help anyone is negligible(in most cases).

and yes give a try..you gonna lose nothing even if its not going to work.