Suddenly, my pc is very sluggish, it is hard to download files or even play games. I think I've disabled my anti-virus software but nothing seems to be working right.  Help!

    Many things can make your computer sluggish: a polluted registry, not enough free space on your hard drive, too many programs running at once, not enough RAM memory, a messed up operating system (Windows), or a virus.  Most of these cause your computer to slow down a little at a time over months or even years.
    If it is a sudden thing, as you say, it is probably a virus or many viruses.  I would suggest that you run a scan with your anti-virus software to see what viruses you have.  Other possibilities are that you have a humungous program running that is taking up all of your resources (highly unlikely) as you suspected your anti-virus software of doing, or Windows is messed up.
    Another way to determine what the problem is is to think about what you did just before your computer suddenly slowed down.  If you opened an attachment to an email message (a big no-no) or ran an unknown file from the internet, you have a virus.
    If you installed a new program, the problem could be that that program is taking up too much memory or that it messed up something on your computer.

I found out that Adobe PhotoShop Album Starter Edition 3 consumes an inordinate amount of processor capacity. Take a look whether you may have that pregranm installed on your system.

Kercelia,

As Ray stated, there are tons of things that could be causing this.

The quickest way to find out what is eating your CPU usage is when it's sluggish - type Ctrl + Alt + Delete.

This will pull up the Task manager.

Go to the second tab that says 'Processes' and maximize the screen and print screen it for us, so we can see what's eating your availalbe memory.. Make sure you do a second print screen to paste in this forum thread if all the processes don't show on the first...

That way we can help you identify the problem.

Another thing i do when pc's start to act sluggish is too look for spyware programs that may"secretly" downloaded and installed. I look at the program file folder to see if there are any folders that I have not installed - a couple are Wild Tangent, savedot, anything that does not look usuall. If you have installed any of the Kazaa or limewire programs etc they open ports for other spyware to install. I would highly suggest not only running an antivirus scan - first check to see that the data files are up todate - out of date by more than a few weeks and chances are it won't do much good and Go - right now - out and purchase a very good spyware program remover. Very necessary if you surg the internet or open emails that are questionable or if you use instant message programs.
good luck P