Is it a virus that's slowing down my laptop?

[Echosei]

Hi there,

I recently purchased an HP pavillon dv3
-CORE i7
-Windows 7 premium
-300GB Harddrive
-2GB RAM

PROBLEM:
The whole system slows down exceedingly everytime I use it. I think it's a virus because it started happening when I loaded a lot of files from our previous computer into my laptop. The most obvious symptom of it slowing down is when the music I'm listening to starts to crash (at first I thought the speakers are the problem). Even if there's only one application opened, the laptop is still very SLOOOOW. It doesn't stay slow all the time though; sometimes the system speed will go back to normal....then SLOW DOWN again! When I restart it, it will mostly go back to it's proper/normal working condition; but after I think 10 minutes or so,,well it will most likely SLOW DOWN AGAIN. I've scanned the whole system but it didn't help a bit(it did detect some viruses but it's all fixed). I've dEFRAGMENTED, SYSTEM TUnED-UP, and ResCANNED again. Nothing happened.

IS THERE REALLY A VIRUS THAT SLOWS/CRASHES A SYSTEM THIS MUCH?!
WHAT CAN I DO before I finally contact HP? (who would probably tell me that they will reformat my laptop)

DO I NEED A REFORMAT?!<no please, no>
HELP!!!!

[techww]

hi mai be it is a virus problem so you have to update your antivirus and than scan again and delete all cookies and temp files from your system than restart your system i hope it fix your problem

thanks

[Aimee Bailey]

silly question, but how much hard disk space do you have left?

[Nepomuk]

Also, you may want to open the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Delet e), choose Performance and keep an eye on that. Then, when it peaks, go to Processes and see, which process is using up all that processing power and/or RAM. That may give you a hint.

Greetings,
Nepomuk