Aspire 5100 running extremely slow!

So I'm guessing I did this to myself somehow but I can't figure out how to fix it. It originally came with Visa but I downgraded to XP and had been using it without problems for awhile. It started getting a little slow so I recently installed (and soon after uninstalled) a bunch of optimizing / driver updating programs. After playing around with those, my laptop is running super slow... I can't watch videos, the buffer causes it to just show the image while the audio plays... After running Dr. Hardware it looks like my CPU is only running at 800mhz which is a lot slower than it used to. Any ideas?

 

Are running on battery ? if yes, try with AC plugin, and check power setting.

 

Maybe you can use System Restore to undo some of the changes.
Also, CPU clocks down when it can to minimize power usage.
It is normal to clock down when you are not doing anything.
Check your CPU speed when your computer is plugged in and using the Always On power profile. Post it up.

 

It's plugged in and I've disabled system restore =/

 

How about the power profile?

 

it's on portable/laptop but i don't see anywhere were it says it will decrease performance or anything like that...

 

I used to have one of those! it was a trooper :} make sure it's on High proformance if you're using Vista. I got confused about which you ended up with. defragment your hard drive. Check Task manager's processes to see how many there are and what's using up all your memory (if anything is) and check the start up folder in the windows menu.

 

I'm using xp and I've uninstalled everything I'm not using. I think it is either driver related or some setting that got screwed up with one of those programs

 

Check startup programs in msconfig, and disable those programs which are not required, which antivirus you are using ?

 

ht tp://pastebin.com/me32615

thats a report by dr hardware. i don't know if that would help any