i dont know what happened but suddenly my computer seems like its just gasping for air. at that point (every 5 seconds) it just pauses. Its a little under 3 years old, crappy Dell. you know the one you get for like 500$ 3 years ago.

i wouldnt care but its the computer with all the videos and my kid's movies on them. i cant even play youtube videos. when i open windows media player every 5 seconds the CPU usage jumps to 99% then goes back to 4%...

the ONLY thing i did in since the issue started was download a codec for Windows Media player from the microsoft site. But nothing broke directly after installation. And my wife downloaded the Xvid player; but thats worked fine for a few weeks.

Sorry if this is tough to read, im just a little stressed here. my 2 year old is screaming for her winnie the pooh videos you CANT buy on video or vhs. (Not to mention she locked the player so THAT wont work either anyways...)

Is my computer in the throes of death? Got a virus? any way i can check/fix it without doing anything invasive or involving being on the phone to customer service for 6 hours? I wanna keep those videos..

did you try doing a system restore to a date before this issue started happening?

Do you have pet that shed alot? I had the same problem. My computer CPU was sucking in dog hair until finally it got matted enough to where it was choking the CPU and overheating. I used a $2 bottle of compressed air and cleaned it out and it worked fine.

well, i dont reall yknow how to do a system restore. anyways i never backed up the files in the past (all the movies i want to keep). i can try the compressed air thing once i can go to a grand and toy n' get something.

any other reasons why this could happen?

Virus

well I assume this pc is running windows xp ,so to do a restore to before the issues started

start> accessories > system tools >system restore >restore my pc to an earlier time .... the rest is self explanitory , it states also , no documents will be toyed with

yes, definetly try doing a system restore. I would also advice doing a virus scan, if you do not have one installed then i suggest using Avast! Also it cant hurt to scan for spyware and adware using ad-aware or spybot search and destroy

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Stingray, you need to post this in a new thread and not in somebody elses thread which has no relevance to what you are talking about, otherwise it gets confusing.

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I don't know if this has been resolved yet, but...

My wifes computer was acting VERY slow at everything. Virus scan and ad scanners all came up negative. About a week later, the hard drive failed and she lost a bunch of songs (thankfully, the photos were backed up).

I guess the moral of the story is: If all your software options don't seem to get you anywhere, rescue all important information of your computer ASAP because something mechanical may be ready to die.