I searched for this question but I could not find anything. However if the is a thread about this alerady, I apologise.

I am running Windows Xp Proffesional.
My computer has been seriously messed up. Grapichs LOOK wierd, takes age just to open a new window and so on. I tried to reboot the system but it didint work. Everything works in safe mode however, if that helps. And thats pretty much where my computer knowledge stops. So I would REALLY appreciate if anyone could help me. If safe mode works good i would suggest running a virus scan.

Also may i ask how old the computer is?Around 4 yearsRemove a side panel and see how many dust bunnies you have...
Carefully inspect the fans and heatsinks.
If it looks bad buy a can of compressed air to blow things out.
Use a QTip to hold the fans in place while blasting them to prevent damage to the fans.
When done power up and make sure all fans are OPERATING correctly.

If the symptoms persist then remove the video card , clean the contacts with rubbing alcohol and re-seat it.

As always when working inside the case remove all power sources and take anti-static precautions.

If it's STILL the same after this you will NEED to swap the vid card into another machine to see if the card has gone south.
You may want to hook up a different monitor to your machine as well to make sure it's not the monitor at fault.Get a registry cleaner to clean up your computer. RegSeeker is good. They said that some computer freezing or apps taking long to load may be related to registry errors.

And how much ram are you using? More ram would help if you're sort of low on memory with a lot of resource hungry applications you want to run.

And for your graphics issue. Get a new card and try it out and see if your computer likes it. If not, something's wrong with your computer's innards and you need to check.Cleaning out the registry is actually not good advice at this point...it's a common misnomer that registry issues cause a machine to run poorly.

The best approach is hardware first...then software issues. The registry is way down on the flowchart most instances...

A Good Read...Yes but it's a thing you can do. Maybe not at this step but it's still something that helps. Quote from: elxr06 on March 16, 2008, 11:29:09 PM

Yes but it's a thing you can do. Maybe not at this step but it's still something that helps.