Computer acting like it is sputtering

[randr]

As I enter text the characters take a few seconds to appear. It is like the screen can't keep up with my typing speed. Nothing else has been added or new. Run Microsoft security scan every week. Not problems reported.
It is a mystery to me.

[canetoad]

1. Need to know:

*Laptop or desktop / battery or mains power?
*Does this happen in all applications? ie no difference in email, word processor, web browser, notepad?
*Has this started suddenly?

Here's a couple of things to try:
1. Start the machine in safe mode and see if the problem occurs. Reboot while continuously tapping the F8 key, then use the arrows to select 'Safe Mode' on the menu. Ignore the fact that your screen looks different.

2.Take a screenshot of your running processes and post it here. It's possible you may have a keylogger that's hiding from security scans.

-Right click taskbar and bring up task manager, select processes tab.
-Press CTRL and PrtScn
-Open a graphics editor (Paint will do)and paste the screenshot into it
-Save as a jpeg and post

[randr]

2. Incomplete shot of task list

Here is most of the task list. Would not fit on screen.
I have a HP Pavilion desk top. Slow typing occurs as I write a post. I cleaned up files, registry, etat and it is better, though not 100%

[canetoad]

3. There's a lot of stuff running

I know it's Win7 and it tends to need more processes than XP but 52 seems like a lot. All the HP Demo things make me a bit suss, expecially as they seem to be system or administrator tasks.

Maybe try going into Msconfig, disabling everything (make a note of what's running so you can turn things back on again) and rebooting. To manage startup programs in msconfig do this:

Start>Run> type in msconfig hit enter
go to startup tab, untick all boxes, reboot. You will get a dialogue box on reboot, just tick yes.

After reboot, check how many running processes there are. I bet there are a lot less than 52 and you have a lot more free RAM. Then see if the text is still slow. I know this seems tedious; my suspicion is that your machine is just running out of resources because of all the HP crap that loads at startup.

From your screenie, Firefox seems to be using an enormous amount of memory. Mine uses about 90,000k. Yours is using more than 3 times that. Do you have a lot of add-ons? Also, I've never seen that many instances of svchost. It's absolutely normal to have multiple instances running but 13 seems too much.

[randr]

4. Actually running vista

The hp demo stuff is because I bought a floor model. Have not had time to figure out if I could remove the stuff or how safe it would be. I have no system administrator assigned.

[canetoad]

5. Being HP it will probably have a restore system state

option in the bios boot screen and a partition somewhere with an unending supply of these HP goodies (parasites!), so I wouldn't worry about deleting them. HP make decent hardware and printers but the crap that comes with it is a pain.

[randr]

6. I,ll tackle this in the morning

Will post to let you know how it went. Thanks a lot for your help!

[randr]

7. Because HPdemo was acting administrator

files are intertwined between the demo package and my set up as administrator. I am hesitant to remove or turn off any that I am not sure contain windows sys commands. After cleaning out the dead and running a scan with Adware things are working much better. I suspect, as you noted, as lose of RAM due to all the crap running in the background. I may ask one of my tech friends to stop in and give the system a once over to see if I can extract the HPdemo files.