Computer is really slow - Virus or hardware or software?!?

[misle]

A friend calls me with a computer problem. He says his computer is really slow and the CD-Rom won't work. He claims it is a virus. I built the computer for him about 1 1/2 years ago, so I took it to my house to look at.

Specs:
Dual Boot: Win2k & Win98
MSI K7T Pro (MS-6330) Bios ver. 1.8, built in sound
Duron 700
128 MB Siemens PC133 CL-3 SDRAM
Nvidia TNT2 Ultra 16MB Vid Card
Cheap $8 PCI Winmodem
250 Power Supply

I ran Norton AntiVirus, and another Free virus scan on it and haven't found anything. I also defragmented the drives, which seemed to help a little, but not much (could be a placebo effect).
The system is very slow. Opening even the "My Computer" takes quite a while (like 1 to 2 minutes), but according to the Task Manager, the CPU is 99% idle.

Now, I'm at a loss. I do not know what could cause this. It acts very similar in Win98 as well.

Any help, suggestions or further questions are welcome!

Thanks for taking the time to help.

-Matt

 

[Adul]

try adaware. download it from download.com

it should remove tons of spyware from his system. it might make a difference.

 

[misle]

I really doubt it is Spyware. He doesn't download and install any programs that I know of.

I'll give it a try, can't hurt.