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Hmm...the prefetch cache is only used when a call is made by commonly used programs. Clearing the prefetch cache is only really useful to rid yourself of extra unnecessary files when you uninstall programs as Windows will simply rebuild the directory.

Since we're trying to diagnose a cause of sudden sluggishness, clearing the prefetch won't really do anything unless the HDD is full. A quick review of the prefetch directory, however, is a good indicator of which programs have been running. I usually take a look to see if I can spot anything out of the ordinary.

Other helpful ideas:

- Disable system restore before you do anything...irritating spyware and virii can hide here and restore themselves
- Download and run X-Ray PC (freeware) and run an online analysis of your processes...will give you a good/bad/unknown triage for some processes and allow you to kill them.
- Start>Run> msconfig.exe and check your startup processes...do a quick google search for anything you don't recognize and if it is not a necessary startup process, kill it. Having a shitload of processes running at startup can bring your system to its knees. Usually, for a desktop XP machine, between 28 and 35 processes is ideal on a fresh boot. For a laptop it can be up to 50...depends on what utilities are required to make your touchpad/buttons/wireless/etc work.
- Start>Run> msconfig.exe and check your services. Check 'hide all Microsoft services' and do a quick scan to make sure no extra junk services are hiding here. If you lose functionality to something on startup that you want, you can either just turn it back on or, if necessary, boot into safe mode and turn it on.
- Download Crap Cleaner and run the registry scan to see how many junk items you have in your registry. Review the causes and fixes to all the issues you find...you're usually okay doing a fix all but I check them just in case (this is your registry after all...never hurts to back it up either.)
- Add/remove any programs that you don't recognize or don't use. All this extra junk does nothing to help you. Additionally, if you can pinpoint one or two programs that were installed around the time your computer started having issues, definitely uninstall them and check your performance after (probably run ccleaner again to ensure they are completely gone).
- Restart your machine and check msconfig and xraypc again to ensure that nothing you killed came back...if it did, you've got a virus or spyware.
- If you still have issues, try running one of many drive fitness test tools to determine whether or not you have bad sectors or possibly a bad HDD altogether. Some tools will even allow you to repair the bad sectors but usually if you've got bad sectors you should start looking at a new HDD soon.
- If you have the option, pull the HDD and hook it up to a test rig and run a Housecall scan on the drive.
- Run Rootkit Revealer to determine whether or not you have a rootkit installed on your machine. Rootkits are nasty as hell but you can usually find additional info via a google search on how to rid yourself of them.
- When all else fails, a clean install is usually the best way to get your system back up to snuff. It is a pain in the fucking ass and no one likes to do it until you remember what it is like having a clean install. Just make a list of your programs, do a backup of your data, and format that sucker.

Hope some of that is helpful...a lot of the other comments I see here are great things to check as well (right below me I see gad zuki! mention netstat -a to check your active connections...also very useful) so bookmark this page and try everything. If nothing else, you'll learn some new tricks.

I'm not sure where you are looking. This works, and here is another mirror, and here's one more just for kicks.
Still need more?

The service pack has already been leaked (more info here with usenet and bittorrent links). So far its working fine. There have been some scattered reports of problems but this is mainly due to people missing updates via glitches within Windows Update.

1. My suggestion is everyone download Secunia PSI to scan their systems for older/vulnerable software. Update all software it finds to be out of date.

2. Use Filehippo.com's Update Checking utility to update any software that PSI misses.

3. Use a registry cleaner and temporary file cleanup utility to CCleaner.

Then do the update. It should go perfectly well then.

And no mirror, try file hippo ( http://www.filehippo.com/download_truecrypt ).
If that somehow fails you, or want to download it even faster. Try the P2P channel, I hear that's a popular one these days. Check your local listings for TrueCrypt v5.

Here it is

Yep, Filehippo has all the old versions http://filehippo.com/download_firefox/?15.

On a complete tangent - what software submission sites/distribution channels can people recommend (like fileforum/download.com etc) for getting your own freeware/shareware listed? I've got a guitar tutor thingy at http://www.webprofusion.com/scalex that I want to finally get rolling out, it's been sitting around for ages and I've another update in the works.

mirror: http://www.filehippo.com/download_vlc/

I'm not familiar with Filehippo, but they have version 1.37 which was the last one before February's version with adware. They even note on the page that later versions have the adware and so will not be hosted by them. Sounds like a good site.

I checked out what WhenU does. According to what I read, it downloads a bunch of ads from their server, and then the program running on the user's machine decides what ads are appropriate to display. It apparently does not send browsing info back to the central server. So it's more like if your TV downloaded all the ads from a show, then only displayed the ones it thought you would be interested in.