PC seems to be heading for a crash

[Lartamax]

My P.C has gradually been getting less and less responsive. I have run virus checks, defragmented the hard drive and unticked any un-necessary programmes running in the background.
The problem is gradually getting worse and I am waiting for it to crash completely.
Problems include : slow to boot up. Sometimes from sleep mode it won't boot up at all and have to power off and restart from scratch.
It appears to struggle when 2 or 3 programmes are open at once.
I do a lot of photography and if I open a high resolution programme the image is sometimes initially blurred then starting at the top and working down it brings it into focus.
When using photoshop some of the tools stop working especially if trying to highlight large areas.
Many issues are intermittent eg: when typing a letter tonight and not using any other programme the text was appearing on screen much slower than I was typing and I had to wait for it to catch up.
At this time a droning noise could be heard from the P.C. The noise is now gone as is the problem with typing.
However the issues are becoming more frequent and I fear it may crash completely. Any advice greatly appreciated.

John.

Packard Bell
Iextreme M5740
Intel ( r ) core ( TM ) i5 CPU 650 @ 3.20 Ghz
Internal Memory 4GB RAM
Split drives of 500GB each
Drive 1 = 250GB Free
Drive 2= 500 GB Free
Running Windows 7
ATI Radeon HD 5570

 

[Badger0-0]

Back up the drive, or most importantly your important stuff and do a new install.
It'll probably be fine then, at least for a while.

There's been a couple of debates recently about why Windows just seems to get clogged up, but no one can give an answer, so the conclusion just has to be that it does and it's currently unavoidable.

 

[Greg Hook]

As Badger said, a new install of windows will hope much better.

Also, as you are doing it (well not exactly at the same time ) give the internals of the PC a good spring cleaning, to remove any dust that will make it run hotter than it should.

 

[Lartamax]

Thanks for the advice I will try it over the christams break. Will make a change from the sound of music and the wizard of Oz