W7 very slow

Hey Terry - The symptoms you describe would normally be caused by either memory leaks or malware - not being able to start MBAM indicates it may well be the latter.

Have you tried running a scan through your resident AV?

Alternatives would be to download one of the AV rescue discs and boot direct from the disk to perform a scan, or try one of the online scanners such as Eset or TrendMicro House Call.

From what you have described, the most likely suspect would be malware. I'd advise you to eliminate that as a possible cause before looking elsewhere.

Cheers... Jim

LOL. No mate. Sounds like it might be either a software conflict or a program leaking memory then. What security programs do you have installed? Have you installed any new ones lately?

Open Task Manager, go to the 'Processes' tab and click on the option to "Show processes from all users". Click at the top of the "Memory" column so numbers are displayed descending (highest at the top). Can you see anything there which is utilizing a lot of memory? Post a list of the top 3 or 4 and corresponding numbers if you wish.

Cheers... Jim

Is that 50-60,000k each or total?

Well that's about normal then, certainly nothing over the top.

Try disabling AVG for a time and see what happens. Should be an option in the right click menu to temporarily suspend real time protection, or turn off altogether. Don't use your browser during that time, just navigate around and see if RAM usage drops and it is any quicker. If not, do the same with Threatfire.

If still no joy, open a Run dialogue box (Windows key + R key), type msconfig into the dialogue box and then hit OK or the Enter key. Go to the Startup tab and post a screenshot of the list.

Then, still in msconfig, go to the Services tab and click on Hide all Microsoft services. Include a screenshot of that list too.

Something is using more RAM than it should, we need to find out what. As I said mate, it will generally be caused by malware, software conflicts, or memory leaks. Seems, after your responses, malware and memory leaks are not likely so some sort of software conflict is next on the list, and security software is the usual suspect.