Well, I scanned an IDE hard drive filled with viruses, and ever since then my computer hasn't been running on it's top performance. I've purchased System Mechanics, and TuneUp Utilities, but it still continues to run sluggish.

I'm running out of ideas here.

I have posted this on at the Malware section (http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=135714&st=0&gopid=791829&#entry791829), but there isn't anything vicious in my computer.

I'm running Windows XP SP2, 512 MB ram, 2.80 Ghz. Prior to hooking up the external hard drive, my computer would excellent, yet now, there's always something going on with the computer that I don't know about.

Any ideas?

What is the capacity of you hdd, and how much free space do you have?

When was the last time that you defragged the hdd?

I have a 160 GB hard drive with 67.4 GB of free space.

I defragmented about a month ago. Even when I had performed the defragmentation, the computer was still running the way it does now: slow, and at times, unresponsive.