How can I improve my laptop's speed?

Details to know:

I have an Acer TravelMate C300, and have had it for more than 2 years now. This is the only computer I have so I do everything with it, including games and downloading. As time went by the laptop has just been getting slower and slower and now has reached an annoying level. It takes at least 6 minutes for the strat-up and 2 just to open up IE. Not to mention all the other programs that are slow as hell.

I've run the disk clean-up, done the disk fragmenting, run a program called "regcleaner" (which is supposed to get rid of all the registry keys that are useless) and have been running "Pc Booster" but all with no huge improvement.

Other things to know are that I have a 512 RAM and Norton as an antivirus.

Please help me out because I can't take this slowness anymore, I've tried everything I can think of!!!

How can I improve my laptop's speed?antivirus programs

OK. Here's the deal.

From your screen name, I'll guess you're thrifty.

You have a 2 year old laptop, that is minimally upgradable, if at all.

You have too many programs running and not enough power or speed to run them.

Despite your standard clean-ups, you may still have a lot of spyware, adware and / or viruses fouling things up. And trying to add more programs to clean that up would be like pouring water from a leaking boat, or worse.