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Suddenly your computer is behaving really badly. You're running out of resources, programs are crashing, something's definitely wrong. Maybe you just installed a new program. Maybe you're not sure what happened.
Any computer will get sluggish without regular maintenance. I'm assuming that you've been regularly running ScanDisc and DeFrag and know that that isn't the problem.
Sometimes it's a weird glitch that will go away, so try a restart. Start > Shut Down > Restart > OK.
Go back to whatever you were doing when the problem first showed itself.
A reboot doesn't always do the trick though, so if it doesn't, shut down completely, wait a minute and turn your computer back on.
Again, go back to what you were doing and see if the problem reoccurs.
If the problem is still there, get very serious.
If you think a new program caused the trouble, go to Add/Remove programs and uninstall the program.
Virus check your whole computer.
Run AdAware, SpyBot, HijackThis.
AND THEN...
When you see C:>windows in white writing on a black screen:
If a program that you suspected of causing trouble is one that you particularly want, you could try installing it again, but first wait a couple of days to make sure that everything is definitely as it should be. That way, if things get bad a second time, you can be certain what caused it.
PS. Sometimes there's one tiny part of one program that's always wonky. For instance, on one machine that was otherwise beautifully behaved, Paint crashed every time I chose View Bitmap. After I'd uninstalled and reinstalled Paint it still happened. I just decided not to use View Bitmap. Everything else was fine, I knew my machine was clean and maintained properly, and that particular problem wasn't worth losing sleep over.