When we see complaints like "My system is (or has become) sluggish", there are some common things
that need to be determined:

1. Is your system limited in RAM or swap space?
   
2. Do you have a large number of Services or Progams autostarting at boot time?
   
3. Was it acceptable previously and recently it has degraded ?
   OR has it be sluggish forever?
   
4. Did you recently add software or hardware?
   
5. Is the system sluggish only when accessing the Internet or LAN?
   

(a)system limited in RAM, can be verified easily.

Right-click on My Computer -> Properties. The General Tab will
show the RAM installed under Computer:
The swap space is found undeder the Advanced Tab-> Performance Settings button
and click the Advanced Tab. At the bottom is the Virtual memory size.
Your system will 'perform better' if you make it 2-3x the size of the installed RAM.
Click Change and set the lower and upper numbers to the same value.
A reboot is necessary to apply this change.

After the reboot, you should then

• defrag the system disk
  download and run Pagedefrag
  reboot once again.

(b) number of Services or Progams: Running a large number of programs will consume massive amounts of system resources.
Much of the autostart programs are really not required all the time and changing the startup to manual will get them started when needed.

See Trimming Windows Processes and
and trimming-startup-programs

(c) (d) (e) TBD

__________________
J. O. Beard; you + tech-101.com => synergism. Secure your system now