> My 6 month old HP Pavilion with Pentium 4 3.2 GHz processor is very slow in
> opening new applications. When I click on an icon on the desktop, start
> menu, control panel, etc. there is nearly always a 10 second (sometimes
> more) lag before the application opens. This is not new; it has always been
> that way. When I first got it, I complained to HP support, but they
> couldn't do anything, and even went so far on one occasion to tell me that a
> 10 second delay was normal. It surely isn't on my laptop (1 GHz or my
> former computer). I don't have a lot of things in the start up program that
> might cause this. And there is no lag when I use the keyboard program keys
> to open an application such as Outlook Express or IE, or when I use the
> "windows"
> key to, for example, show desktop. It's only when I use
> the mouse. I even tried a different mouse with USB connection. Nothing
> seems to work. I'm not sure whether this is a hardware, software, or maybe
> even a mouse problem, but it certainly is annoying! Anyone have any
> suggestions about what I might do to fix this?
>
Given that you've mentioned elsewhere in this thread that you're pretty
much OK for malware and CPU usage, I'd be thinking about your graphics
card. Have you got the most appropriate drivers? (In that newer drivers
are sometimes optimised for newer cards and newer operating systems).
Try different drivers, reducing the colour depth of the desktop, turning
off Active Desktop and turning off the menu animations. If it helps,
then you can turn anything that you want back on again, and see which
things slow it down again.

HTH.

CK