Can't Find Anything Wrong With My PC???

Could ANYONE out there assist me with this mystery
problem that I just started having only a few days ago.
I loaded XP Pro on my machine 1-19-04. Updated it fully,
loaded my Mcafee, firewall etc. It was running like a
champ. UNTIL, a few days ago. It has intermittently,
been really slow, it seems to always start when I get
online. It would be fine for a minute or so, and then
just freeze. The only way to get out of it is if I
ALREADY have 'Task Manager' running. If not, and I try to
pull it up, it doesn't respond. X-ing out of AOL does no
good, it just hangs. When i am able to finally stop it
from running, the apps on my system are affected
afterwards also. It's slow for a minute or so after I'm
able to get off the Net, and then it snaps out of it.
Even something simple like opening a folder, it would
take a good minute before it shows up.

I thought that 'My Doom' had gotten ahold of My Computer,
so I downloaded the fix and ran it twice. It detected
nothing. I run Spybot and Adaware on a regular basis,
right now I don't have anything on my system. I thought
that maybe the AOL software had currupted somehow. ?????
So I uninstalled it and reinstalled it to no avail,
still intermittent freeze-ups and slow downs.

The reason that I say intermittent is, right now - it's
fine, been fine for about 2 hrs so far. Web pages popping
up with ease. BUT, 2 hrs and ten minutes ago, it was
doing the same thing. I was able to get offline without
shutting down and after a few minutes, tried it again.
Now it's running AOL with NO problem. ????????

I saw an earlier post that sounded similar to my
situation, the person that responded to it said to empty
the 'prefetch' folder. It's located in the windows
folder. Never heard of it or noticed it before. I
haven't the FAINTEST idea if that might have anything to
do with what's going on with me. (Just thought that I
would mention it)

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, if anyone at all have any info on
what the heck is going on with my system, PLEASE don't
hesitate to send me a reply. I cannot figure out why it's
doing this mess.

THANX (BIGTIME) N ADVANCE! The Rookie/Wayne B.