2 New Installs Both Sluggish

[sansnom]

Hey guys

Admitedly I haven't formatted my computer or my laptop in a good while so I may have forgotten to do something / optimise but basically I've decided to format both of them yesterday and I've noticed a couple of things:

Both of them are sluggish and hang often for no particular reason that I can see whether it be opening a web page or browsing through folder etc.

They're both absolutely bare (just vista 64 ultimate Sp-1 with all windows subsequent windows updates downloaded via Windows Update)

and Kaspersky AntiVirus.

They're both 4gb ram, 2.2ghz dual core and 2.4ghz quad core so it really shouldn't be a hardware issue especially with nothing installed except the OS...

Any ideas what could be causing both computers to be so sluggish? Did i forget to install something?

 

[sansnom]

Thanks a lot for suggestions so far.

Drivers are definitely up to date for graphics, sound, lan, wifi etc. I just let windows install the other basic ones during setup, like chipset etc. And Windows update doesn't show any more updates available and i think it usually picks up out of date drivers so should be ok on that front.

As for hardware, the laptop is only 4 months old (Acer 6930G) and the desktop is about a year old. It could be a HDD issue though the HDD doesn't make any unusual sound and in my experience if it's on its way out it usually gets louder and more whiney.

I'll try the Kaspesky vs Windows Defender thing and see if that helps.

Regarding Windows 7 - I was thinking about this but I was under the impression it doesn't run most of the games/apps we use at the moment. Is this true? I guess I could give it a try if you guys recommend it, I just really use basic things like itunes, web, email, and the ocassional game like CoD6, warcraft 3, etc.