CoD2 Starting and loading HORRIBLY SLOW

I am completely baffled; I was playing fine a few weeks ago, game starts up lightening fast, and I was the first one to load in pretty much any server I went to. I didn't play for a few weeks and then when I tried to start it up yesterday it was horrible. Took about 3min to get to the main menu from clicking the shortcut on my desktop and the loading was like I had 512 again. Once in game I had no problems no RAM lagg like I would get with 512, nothing. I have no idea whats going on; I haven't changed anything to do with the game to my knowledge and other games are running the same as they normally do (CoH, Sims 2) well actually I went and tried to play UO and it didn't go nearly as fast as it normally does either. I haven't tried Activision yet because in the past they have been far less than helpful so if anyone here has any insight it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

 

virus? (ten characters) something else running maybe?

 

Well ill check on the virus-I can just see it now- The Malicious Anti-CoD Virus!!!
As far as other things running I have monitored the task manager carefully and nothing else is using a significant amount of memory but what I have noticed is that even when loading maps cod seems to be using a lot less than it could (I'm talking like 100-200mb when it has almost a gig available to it) well I guess I'll spend the evening doing my weekly cleaning a little early...

 

A fragmented HD maybe? If it is your HD bottlenecking the game, then that would be the most likely issue.

 

Totally baffled-2 different virus scan programs, 3 spyware scans, registry cleaned, disk defragged- and still nothing. Activision will be receiving some hate mail from me (although I probably wont get a response till Tuesday). The worst part is when they respond to you they just give you the usual troubleshooting things that any monkey could do even if you tell them you have already done all of those things in your original message. grr.

 

Try re-installing the game?

 

Well I reinstalled 3 (count them 3-1 was corrupt-2 the patch dl was corrupt and messed with the whole thing-and 3 worked perfectly fine)
But it turns out that one of the recent updates to zone alarm is to blame because when I turned it off the game loads up instantly an all is well. The problem remains that I especially can't play online with no security so I going to have to wait for za to update and fix it.