[Tim]

Mcafee Security center usually runs about 13 processes all in its own when you have Firewall Plus, Site Advisor, Privacy Service, etc., so removing it usually will speed things up. My favorite anti-virus that is very transparent (uses very little resources) and very effective is ESET NOD32. It's rated as one of the top antivirus programs.

The other issue is the way that Windows Media Player and Adobe Flash player are integrated into Windows and IE7. Have you tried using Firefox?

Another way to help speed up computer performance is to disable User Account Control to gain some more resources back. That can be found in Control Panel >> User Accounts.