Very Slow and toolbar changes

Windows XP Pro SP3.
About a week ago I installed AVG Free 2013 and since then my PC has been acting strange. It is very slow. When I click the Yahoo icon on the desktop, it takes quite awhile to get to Yahoo, and once there, the complete Yahoo homepage takes several minutes to load. Then when I try to get to my mail by clicking the mail button at the upper right of the homepage, all I get is a blank white page.

Thinking maybe Yahoo was doing some site maintenance I tried my old W98 PC. From the desktop to Yahoo was much faster and I got to my mail list.

Also, each time I boot up the XP, the background color of the toolbar at the top, changes from gray to black. When I click Start>Settings>Control Panel>Display the "Theme" has changed from "My Curent Theme" to "Modified Theme". To get the toolbar background back to gray I have to click "My Current Theme" and Apply. But next time I boot up, this has changed back to "Modified Theme".

Did installing AVG Few 2013 do something to cause these problems? I have cleared the cache of temp files and cleared the cookies, but it still runs very, very slow.

Hi jwr243,

Have you tried uninstalling AVG?

Remove AVG using Add/Remove programs feature and download this AVG Remover to clear any remnants lying around. Check and see if there are any improvements.

All I have for virus protection is AVG free 2013. If I remove it, I won't have any protection. I didn't have any problems with the previous AVG version, but the company sent a couple pop-up messages saying I had to update to 2013. When I didn't do that, they removed the prior version. Is there a better free anti-virus program available?

There's Avast! Free edition and Microsoft Security Essentials. You will never go wrong with either one of them.