Ugh... My computer is slow!!

I got my computer a couple of years ago. It's running win2000 pro, pentium 4 processor, 128 megs ram, 36 gig hd. I've tried using a ton of RAM optimizers, but they never seem to work- my computer is always losing free RAM by the minute no matter what I do. Within 20 minutes of optimizing to 51 megs free ram, it's back at 10 megs or so free. And that's not helping my speed particularly much. I've defragmented my hard drive and registry, cleaned the registry, and compressed the registry, scanned for spyware with Ad-Aware and Spybot, cleaned my cookies and temporary files, cleaned up junk files and programs (29 gigs left), scanned for viruses, gotten rid of unneccessary processes and startup applications, and downloaded all the windows updates from microsoft. WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH THIS COMP??? I just don't understand the problem, whatever I'm missing. It's obviously not a malicious program, nor is it a bad setting. I'm thinking of upgrading my OS, but I don't think that'll do much good for it. Why is it so slow? Thanks!

You have some program thats leaking memory. But 128 just is not enough for anything. Upgrade. 256 is the bare minimum i would consider using, but you really want at least 512mb. That is the most cost effective upgrade you can do.

Erg... Well, there's something I've always found awful strange. If you have a T-Mobile Pocket PC, you can get a 256 MB ram upgrade (PPC comes with 128 MB ram, right?). Now, what makes this so out of the ordinary is that it's a download. You download the thing, and it reinstalls Windows CE on your PPC with a bunch of upgrades. How the heck can a download increase RAM space? Also, how do I find what's leaking memory? Plus, I think I only need 128 more MBs of RAM- I'm not playing many games with this thing, nor am I using anything that requires very much RAM. I still have a few free PCI slots, so could you help me find a RAM card really cheap?

Couldn't find what you were talking about with the pocket pc download. I can only guess that perhaps it has more physical memory, but needs a software upgrade to recognize and use it.
You would find the leak by opening one program at a time to see which one causes the degeneration, or possibly you could find a tool to help.
You don't install ram in the pci slots, there are ram slots by the cpu. You need to find what type of ram you have, and get a stick of that.

do you mean to say this has been going on since day 1 of having the machine?

No no no no no, sometime in the past year (yeah, sorry about the long time) it started slowing down slightly. Well, anyway, the ram problems are there from when it boots- even when nothing's running when i boot. weird...

I think you can try installing Win98 Second Edition . If the problem exists, try Win95 , since most of the RAM problems can't come in Win95 machines(My personel Experience) .

Then you can go for a conclusion. And also if possilble , get some of your friends RAM and check for the problem .