Slowness of Windows 7 machine 2 years old

Recently my computer has been freezing. It usually will start when the screen saver is on. Sometimes just hitting the enter key will stop it, other times I will have to use the 'off' button and just reboot. Usually it works for a few days or so then does it again. I have heard of the Event Viewer and have looked at it but I have no clue what I'm looking at or for.

Another problem I have is right click. Anytime I right click on anything it takes from 1 to 2 minutes for the sub entries to show up.



I am running Win 7 on a 2 year old machine, I have never reinstalled Windows on this computer but I did a repair install after about 7 months. Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions short of a wipe and reinstall.

It is a
Model: Dell Studio 540
Processer: Pentium(R) Dual Core CPU E5400 @ 270ghz 270ghz
Installed Memory (RAM) 8.00gb
System type: 64bit operating system
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Home Premium edition

Hi philo have you tried any maintenance on this computer, like defragging the harddrive, deleting temporary files/cookies, etc. Run sfc /scannow? Does event viewer show any yellow exclamation points or red x's?

Have you also ran any antivirus or antimalware scans?

Up to date on Microsoft fixes; I run Spybot every two weeks or so, last scan found four hits all minor. I have Malwarebytes installed and it runs continuiously. I ran the sysinternals defrag about a week ago on all hard drives internal and external. I use Crapcleaner to clean up stuff but don't use the registry cleaner. I have not run SFC /scannow lately. Event viewer shows nothing in color all black and white. Had a module abend during event viewing and had to restart. Will try the SFC thing.

If sfc /scannow doesn't fix it, you could do a system restore back to a date previous to your problems.

SFC didn't find anything wrong. Will see what more I can do.

Start Task Manager and see what processes are using CPU time when you are waiting for your right-click context menus to appear. It is possible that a context menu add-on is the culprit there. A manufacturer diagnostic of the hard drive might also be a good idea.

OK, I'm at work now, will do that when I get home.

Running sfc /scannow doesn't tell you if any thing was wrong or fixed, it just fixes system files out of whack.

Ran Spinrite (from GRC) on the C disk; took 2 hours but everything checked out ok. Then checked the other disks from the properties and they are ok too. Marked the C Disk for checking and rebooted, and it checked out ok too. Still sluggish so did a Repair Install which took about 3 hours and it does seem somewhat better now. Will see what happens.