AMD Athlon XP real slow

[Rhombus65]

I am working on a compaq presario 6320, XP Home SP1, 512MB ram, Maxtor 60GB HDD.

It is running an AMD Athlon XP (?? 2000+ 1666MHz ??)

I am not very familiar with AMD.

I ran Ad-Aware, Spybot, CWShredder. Ran Maxtor HDD Diagnostic.

Computer is real slo

http://wwww.

Is this typical for this CPU? Everything I do takes for ever.

Could it be RAM? If so how would I test that?

Any ideas?

Jim: A+, MCP W2k, Master Electrician

"The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing..."
-Albert Einstein

 

[Rhombus65]

I just went to AMD web site and found a program (amdcpuid.exe) to provide info on CPU.

Came back as CPU speed = 1,743 Mhz. I am thinking the CPU is fine.

Any Ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Jim: A+, MCP W2k, Master Electrician

"The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing..."
-Albert Einstein

 

[tf1]

Try a hardware test utility such as Sisoft Sandra and see if it can find anything. Although not the bleeding edge, your spec shouldn't be noticably slow.

Regards: tf1

 

[Rhombus65]

tf1:

Thank you for your reply.

I will have a look at Sisoft.

Jim: A+, MCP W2k, Master Electrician

"The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing..."
-Albert Einstein

 

[Freestone]

Some process(es) may be taking up most of the CPU time, possibly virus related. You may want to try a couple of free online scanners from smah's faq760-3862.

If those don't find anything, then bring up Windows Task Manager by pressing simultaneously the keys: <Ctrl> <Shift> <Esc>. Click on the Processes tab, check box Show processes from all users, then click on the CPU column header once or twice to sort descending. System Idle Process should be around 99 percent for an idle system. If not, report the high usage process here.

 

[Rhombus65]

FYI

I did not end up using Sisoft as I am too cheap to buy software.

It looks like Norton AV was corrupted somehow and that was slowing the computer down.

There was an entry in Spybot Startup that looked like an NAV entry but was actually something bad. I removed the entry and turned off NAV and it "seems" OK.

Jim: A+, MCP W2k, Master Electrician

&quot;The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing...&quot;
-Albert Einstein

 

[edemiere]

Well, depending on the type of RAM in the system (i.e. if it's PC133) I would say that 512MB is a minimum that I would ever try to use Windows XP on. 768MB or 1GB is what I recommend to everyone because anything else I find is sluggish using Windows XP.

Depending on what you are doing with your PC, there are a slew of services that can be disabled to free up some system resources.

Also, if you are using McAfee (*shudder*) there is a known issue that can make their software climb to 100% usage on the CPU which will also in turn make your PC crawl...

 

[dlongnecker]

A quick question, have you installed the AMD Athlon drivers from AMD's website and/or your motherboard manufacturer? I'm a recent convert from the Pentium4 to the AMD64 line and found that the drivers significantly increased my performance (just like the Intel Chipset drivers for the Pentium line).

A link:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_2336,00.html

Hope this helps!

-David

---
David R. Longnecker
Web Developer
CCNA, MCSA, Network+, A+
Management Information Services
Wichita Public Schools, USD 259

 

[mainegeek]

Hello Rhombus65,
Have you run Scandisk? Your HDD may have developed bad sectors which can make the drive run slow. Also try running
with CD-Rom drives(s) disconnected as a failing one would also cause to run slow.

Does it run slow in safe mode?

 

[Rhombus65]

To all:

Thank you for your replies.

As I mentioned previously I ran Maxtors diagnostic program and found no problems. I also ram AMD CPU ID program and the CPU seems fine.

I am fixing the computer for a customer and was having a hard time trying to find the problem and the CPU was just a thought I had.

It turns out that the problem was as I posted previously Norton Anti-Virus.

I removed NAV and the computer is now up to speed.

Jim: A+, MCP W2k, Master Electrician

&quot;The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing...&quot;
-Albert Einstein