[oldeguy]

darkpuppet,Jun 18 2009, 09:30 AM Wrote:How old is the computer?

reformatting the drive and re-installing everything will speed it up -- for a short while.

Adding more RAM will keep things in memory and prevent them from swapping to your hdd all the time.

A few tips to help speed things up
1 )  defrag your machine regularily (which you seem to do)
2 )  don't install and uninstall things too frequently
3 )  set your virtual memory minimum and maximum sizes to the same so the swap file never changes and fragments (which eats up tonnes of performance)
4 )  add more RAM

If your machine is only slow on boot-up, I'd recommend just living with it.  If the machine is horribly slow to respond to commands once it's done booting, then I'd look into adding RAM, wiping the drive, etc, etc.
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Dell Dimension 4600, 6 years old I do believe.