First of all I dont know if I should be posting this on WC, its not a WC issue. But I dont know who else to turn to - if the mods think it's out of place and end the thread, I will not be upset.

Our laptop, a Dell Inspiron has run normally for 18 months, but developed a problem yesterday. We run Vista SP2 32 bit with two user accounts, mine and my wife's, both as admin. Since yesterday, logging on using my account results in a drastic reduction in run speed. Previously the used RAM/free RAM was approx 1GB/1GB. Now it's 1.5GB used and 500Mb free. Time between icon clicking and response is in the order of several minutes. Also the spinning circle busy symbol is permanently running. But everything is running normally when I log on using my wife's account. Could this be a virus? Can a virus infect one account while ignoring another. Nothing has been downloaded, and a system restore to two days previous has no effect. CCleaner didnt help this issue either. Anyone got any ideas before we resort to the dreaded factory image reset. WE never do backups!!!