Oddly enough, my overall computer speed has not slowed down. I have 4 gigs of free RAM, by processing speed has a Windows Experience Rating of 6.7, my RAM a rating of 5.9, and gaming graphics of 5.3. A few months ago, my cpu could run games like TF2 with medium graphics online with no lag and now I'm forced to play KOTOR on the lowest possible settings and still get lag. I've scanned my cpu thoroughly for viruses and nothing has popped up. I went through my processes and cleared out all the background processes and still my cpu runs slowly. Right now I'm defragmenting my hard-drive just to be safe although it does defragment weekly. I'm at the end of my rope, and you folks at GT are the most tech savy people I know. Help me please!

Are you sure you aren't accidentally recording videos with Fraps or Xfire or something while you play games? Also, do a virus scan; spyware slows down your computer because it's constantly sending information about what you're doing to an external client.

I'm not inadvertently recording anything. I think I'll put my cpu in safe mode and scan from there.

What virus scanner are you using?

Microsoft Security Essentials. I know its not the best, but it works.

It actually is one of the best, surprisingly. Believe it or not, most payware anti-virus software is terrible, other than ESET NOD32 and maybe Kaspersky.

Okay, well that is one less thing I have to worry about. Right now I did a quick scan and nothing popped up, so I'm doing a full one now.

EDIT:

So I'm about 40% done with the scan and some software has already been picked up. Now I just need to wait until the end of the scan. Should take about an hour. I'll update you guys after I've cleaned up my PC.

EDIT2: 80%

I used this and now I can run Republic Commando on highest graphics with NO lag. Thanks GT.

http://download.cnet.com/Spybot-Search- ... ag=lst-0-1

I was going to say that your lag might be related to your PC monitor, but it seems you don't have to worry about that now.

Actually, my computer only ran fast for that day. I recently scoured the internet and found a program called Advanced System Care 5. It just found 7686 malicious cookies on my cpu. I'm pretty sure a couple cookies aren't that big of a deal, but 7,686? Geeze. Right now it's still working, but I'm pretty sure everything will be sorted out.

Weird, I rebooted and the cpu ran a disk check. About 75% through, it stopped. I waited for about 20 minutes, and absolutely no progress was made, so I skipped the disk check. Earlier, my cpu was running fine, like new, but once I rebooted, it was running slower then ever before. The program I dowloaded can also preform disk checks. I ran it. It also stopped at about 75%. I rebooted again, and re ran all the programs the security system ran when you selected "scan and repair". Now my cpu is back up to speed. Huh.