Slow machine

We have a 3.2 hz 775 processor on a Abit AV8 mobo with 1 Gb ram, an ATI 9200SE Graphics card, 3 Hard drives and 2 DVD rewiters. C drive is for non working Windows ME, D is for Windows XP (system) and E partitioned 4 ways for all other files. We have a 1 M broadband through Wanadoo. The machine is very slow, as in it sometimes takes 20+ secs to switch users. Downloads from the internet seem very fast but displaying them on screen can take 10 or 15 secs. Writing cd's set at 32X actually writes at 6X. Generally we are not impressed. I thought it would be the bees knees, well,, apart from the graphics card. There appears to be no virus;s or malaware on the system thanks to: Trend internet security 2005, Trends housecall (over internet pc check), spybot search and destroy and adaware. Can anyone help!!!!!!!!!

Windows XP May Slow Down If Users Are Logged On with Fast User Switching

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;312058

As to the DVD/CD: what software are you using?

Also:
In device manager go to the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers section and double
click on the channel where the CD is installed. Click on Advanced
Settings and and see what transfer mode the drive is in. Is it DMA or
PIO. If PIO that could be a cause for the slowness. If there were read
errors the system drops it from DMA to PIO.

Also some general sites:
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html