Do you know the processor name at all? For example, one of mine is an "i5 3570k" (I think). You should be able to find this information out from "System Properties" or "System Information" in windows.
See the later answers to this question for some rough instructions on how to find those windows:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10595312/how-to-get-cpus-model-number-like-core-i7-860-on-windows## Software things you can do to make your PC faster
Anyway, have a look at those startup programs. Even if you turn everything off there's only a fairly small chance of breaking the computer, so just turn off everything you know is cruft (adobe updater, apple stuff, antivirus, etc) and google for stuff you don't recognise if you don't feel brave about just turning it off.
You might find that's enough to bring your performance back to a tolerable level. If not, reinstalling windows is often the easiest reliable way to get a windows machine back to a good level of performance.
Once reinstalled, you can keep it reasonably fast by not installing stuff you don't need, by being careful about downloading crapware from the internet and by policing the startup programs in the startup directory and in msconfig/cleaner.
If you have any naive users on the machine (perhaps your mother?), it's normally best to put them on an unprivileged account for their own good (so they can't install crapware by accident or break things).
Also, you don't have very much RAM. It's possible (but not certain) that this is causing you issues). Unless you have a particularly small case for the machine, it's usually pretty easy to fit more, and RAM is fairly cheap, and if your motherboard is recent enough to support DDR3 (probable), you'll probably be able to use any new RAM in your next computer. 8GB of RAM is a sensible amount these days. Enthusiast machines tend to have 16-32GB of RAM, but there's no real need for more than 8 unless you want to get serious about digital art or photo manipulation or you do a lot of software compilation or scientific/numeric processing.
The GNU/linux laptop I'm using right now (2007 x61s Thinkpad) only has 3GB of RAM, and that serves me well enough, but wouldn't under windows (heavier OS, worse OS scheduling, etc). It does have a really terrible screen, though (1024x768, rubbish colours).
## Hardware things you can do to make computers faster
Clean yo computer. Computers don't like to be too hot. Hotter computers experience faster component failure and processors and other components may throttle themselves to avoid heat death.
First thing to do is to clean any dust filters in your case (these are fine meshes in front of vents). Next, you can go further with compressed air and/or disassembling the computer.
You can clean a computer most easily with compressed air. This is cheap and can be used without disassembling the computer. Simply turn the power off, take the computer somewhere you don't mind getting dusty (like outside) and spray compressed air through the vents being careful not to push any fans the wrong way.
You can clean the computer more thoroughly by taking it apart and spraying components with compressed air or wiping them with a microfibre cloth. Pay particular attention to heatsinks and fans. If you're feeling really enthusiastic, you can also take the heatsinks off, clean them with isopropyl and then reseat them with a fresh application of thermal interface paste.
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If you try both the software and hardware fixes and can't get the performance that you want then all you can do is partially or fully upgrade your computer. If you run various diagnostic software, you may be able to determine if any component is faulty (SMART data for hard drives, memtest86 for memory, stress tests + looking at sensor data for processors and GPUs).
If you don't have an SSD then you might want to consider investing in one. It's usually the best improvement in computing experience per dollar if you don't have one. You just need to get a smallish one (64GB would be enough) and install the OS and any programs you think are particularly slow on the SSD, user files and other programs on a HDD.
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