First time registered visitor requesting assistance

Since the only application I've installed after the reformat/reinstall is internet explorer, that's the only gauge of performance and it's painfully slow even loading a homepage. The reinstall placed IE6 on the machine and right away I upgraded to IE7 - maybe too hastily. The internet site he uses for work reporting requires java so I downloaded java as well, but after login to the desired site, the java aplet just hangs the whole session.

Please take a look at your task manager and tell me what processes are taking up the most resources. (ctrl + Alt + del)

Thanks

lack of response,