Problems with XP Pro running extremely slow. 1

[zephyrick]

About a week ago my son noticed that windows was lagging on his 2.0 GHZ, 768 RAM, GFORCE4 128 mb video, Sound Blaster Live Audigy LS sound card. It takes from 3 - 5 minutes to load a web page and about the same to get onto control panel. We have Norton anti virus and it's showing no problems. We've tried reinstalling windows "from inside" windows...we've cleaned everything up but nothing seems to help. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[jrbarnett]

What do you mean by "Cleaned everything up?"
Which of the following did you do:
* Defragment the hard disk
* Empty the Temp folder and temporary internet files
* Run an up to date virus checker over the machine
* Run an up to date spyware/malware checker over the machine
* Removed any unusual entries from a HijackThis log file?

Additionally:
* Look at the event log to see if any new messages have come up recently?
* Installed, Uninstalled or reconfigured any software or hardware on your PC (including running Windows Update).

John

 

[zephyrick]

We did everything but the Hijack(?) ..I'll follow up on your suggestions...thanks much!

 

[Hunter97321]

I had a machine that was performing very slowly, after checking for viruses/spyware/malware, defragging, and scandisk and finding no real problems, I found that the HDD was almost out of room. The main culprit was that system restore had used several gigabytes of space for restore points. I turned off system restore, rebooted, turned system restore back on and set a new restore point. Computer ran great after that. Maybe not the same issue you're having but it's worth a shot.

 

[bpatters69]

A couple of suggestions. I have found the

http://www.tweakxp.com

site very helpful with Windows XP. Not to say there is not great info here as well. You can tell from the replies so far. The only difference is

http://www.tweakxp.com

is solely focused on Windows XP and it has forums as well.

Here is a suggestion that I found helpful:

Click on the start button and select run.
In the text box type msconfig and click ok.
Once the window has loaded, click on the startup tab and uncheck programs you do not want to start up anymore.

Basically the routine allows you to chose what gets loaded into memory at start up. The less that gets loaded, the more RAM you have for the OS and apps.

I hope that helps. Bill



Bill Patterson
Florida

 

[bpatters69]

John,

Where does one find the HijackThis log file? Thx

Bill Patterson
Florida

 

[linney]

Removing adware & spyware
Before Posting a Hijack log file - Best Practices
faq608-4650


These couple of threads cover many reasons for slow downs in XP.

Right Click on Folders Hangs Explorer
thread779-764870

files accessed slow through my computer and not shortcuts
thread779-647815

 

[jrbarnett]

bpatters69

You get HijackThis from here:

http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html

The log file is created when you click the "Scan" button there, you can either save it to a location of your choice or copy and paste into Notepad.

John

 

[zephyrick]

Thanks to jrbarnett for your reference to HijackThis! My son & I used this program, spotted 5 questionable files (3 of which were search engines) deleted them and POW! We now have 2 more happy people on the planet! Thanks again