Windoez Ex Pee Question (Slowing down issue)

Well see, sometimes it does it at random, but usually it's right after I close or while I'm using some program I've been using for awhile (awhile=five minutes), everything will get REALLY slow...is that normal? I don't know much about Windows XP...I was always more of a 98/ME master, niether of which ever did anything like this, and which I ran on my acient slow pathetic machines...yet I go out and buy a new shiny awesome system and it does this...ugh!

But like I said, I don't know if it's normal or not (because XP doesn't run in a DOS shell and is different in some other ways), and I've only been using six months now as opposed to the five or so years I used 98/ME, so I don't know nearly as much about it. Any help would be appreciated (and I know it's kind of a vague problem, but I've talked to someone else who has the same issue), because it's driving me crazy now.

Is it temporary or until you reboot? And how much RAM do you have? It doesn't sound normal to me :p

Rebooting doesn't even seem to change it...it just seems to come and go. I have 512MB of RAM.

I would look at upgrading your ram. Also when is the last time you've run any system maintenance? I was having the same problem and a simple defrag helped considerably.

512 MB should be fine for XP unless you run bloat like Norton or McAfee in the background, or run lots of heavyweight apps/games. How much commit charge does task manager say you're using? Are there any processes in the list eating lots of memory, or even processes you don't know what they are?