I have a P-IV 1.8 Ghz computer with 256MB RAM and 40GB hard disk. Of
late it has become extremely slow. I have done virus checking and
spyware checking. Nothing comes up in that.

Have you done any other kind of housekeeping on your hard drive, like scandisk
and defrag?

Other things to check out is how many programs are running within your computer
at the same time. For instance, if the right hand part of your taskbar is
fully loaded with icons, then maybe you are running too many resident programs
at once. - Reinhart