Ran S&D but alas...

[Eoweniel]

(Alright, would start off by saying that if you think this is the wrong forums for this thread, please move it. I'm new here, all I really want is to get some help... -_-)

Yeah, so... A couple weeks ago I noticed that the amount of intrusions on my PC had increased, severely. Now I'm a WoW player and my account got hacked, so I took precautions, ofcourse. I got the ZoneAlarm free PC suite, ran it.. Ran scans, defragged...and it seemed to remove many viruses etc...

However, then I noticed that my computer started getting EXTREMELY sluggish, and it still is, and I'm getting pretty sick of it. When I actually boot up windows and am on the login screen, I can hear the little music clip that is played when windows boots up, but the screen seems to be standing still. I swear, it takes me about 4-5 minutes 'til all programs actually boot up properly. And moreso, everytime I click a program and want to run it, it takes extremely long time 'til the PC reacts and performs the actions I want it to. So...there's no actual problem when I actually START a program and run it... But up until then, it's soooo extremely sluggish.

Now, a friend told me about Spybot S&D, so I thought I'd get it, and I ran it... And while it DID find some viruses that ZoneAlarm's scans and AdAware's scans couldn't find, it still didn't solve my problem. I thought maybe I'd gotten perhaps some bad trojan or worm that was hogging the capacity of my PC or something... But some other friends say it's hardware failure, and I'm just not sure what to think anymore. It's extremely frustrating, takes me ages to boot up again if anything freezes, let alone if I have to start a program.

I was directed to these forums, having been told you guys could help.

So um...can you? Any ideas? Maybe S&D didn't detect something I have in my system? Or do you think it's hardware failure?

One interesting thing I noticed when this heavy "lag" occurs is that I hear a clicking sound around where my floppydisk drive is, and the lamp is blinking... And I have nothing inside. =/ Could this indicate hardware failure or just the computer being "strained"?

I have a Windows XP Home, btw. It's roughly 2-3 years old, so it's not that bad.

[Jambone]

Uninstall ZoneAlarm and get Comodo, ZoneAlarm is notorious for slowdowns

[Eoweniel]

Uninstall ZoneAlarm and get Comodo, ZoneAlarm is notorious for slowdowns

I've had ZA before, and it has worked without any slowdowns.

[129260]

first off, spybot detects spyware not viruises. Secondly, try checking your hard disk for errors. that might help with the problem. sounds like a hd error or a bad infected machine. try posting in the malware forums.