Speeding up your computer is a time old tradition that we all must learn.
Here is my diagnosis to why things are running slower.
As most users are guilty of you install new things such as music programs itunes whatever maybe some messengers a lot of crap gets installed.
So a time honored tradition is to stop these things from being loaded until you call upon them.
This is not something I am going to take responsibility for if you break your machine but I will attempt to help you get through it.
Services.
Right click my computer go to manage
In manage there is a location called services and applications drill that open and select Services
Now this part can be a lot of trial and error for the newbie but disabling services is step one in this process.
Let me give you a few that are okay to disable in most situations.
Remote Registry is a big one! Security issue here...
I turn off all the Help stuff and also the Error Reporting service. Thats the one that everytime your machine crashes it says should we send an error report to microsoft?
Another one I live without is messenger as I dont use MSN messenger. That one is your call...
Task scheduler most antivirus programs have there own task scheduler in there so this is not needed either.
Now if you really want to speed things up even more I suggest you take a look at what is automatically starting up on your system.
The first area that does this is in the start menu
Start Programs Startup
For me there is nothing in this folder.
You can use a program called autoruns to disable stuff starting automatically the program comes from sysinternals.com
However this is dangerous if your not familiar with windows tweaking.
Now you can also speed the machine up by adjusting the performance settings. Right click my computer select properties advanced tab performance settings
These can be tweaked by every users so play with the options and turning some off will give you better results on computer speed.
Doing a lot of these things should increase your speed but overall making sure you are virus free spyware free are a big piece to increasing speed.
Reboot and call me in the morning