Slow response in Win XP Pro 1

[johnnymc]

I have several Win XP Pro computers that are really slow. This has been a gradual thing according to users. I have used Norton Corp Ed AV, MS antispyware and found nothing. I ran msconfig to see what was being loaded at startup and found nothing.

These units are really slow, I can right click on an icon on the desktop and click on properties and it takes over 3 minutes to bring up the properties window. I had task manager open and watched it, no strange processes running and most of the time the CPU and memory were idle.

I know computers natually slow with age but most of these units has been in service for 6 months or less. Some of the units have SP2 on them and the rest have SP1. They have all hotfixes loaded. We are not running anything out of the ordinary, MS Office 2003 and a SQL based medical app.

Anyone seen anything like this before?

 

[RMGBELGIUM]

Check the size of the userprofile.The greater the size, the slower it goes ...

regards,

R.

 

[johnnymc]

Thanks for the reply. I checked the userprofiles, all of them are under 5mb. That does not seem big enough to cause a problem.

 

[jimp56]

personally i would test one of them off of the network to see if there were any obvious changes in speed. and, login with a local vs. domain account as well when off the lan. it might be network-related.

when on the lan, disconnect any mapped drives/printers, shutdown the sql app, etc. in steps for testing.

 

[johnnymc]

Unplugging the network cable and logging on locally did seem to really speed things up. It does seem to be network related. Any ideas where I should focus?

 

[jimp56]

narrow down any obvious mapping issues:
"when on the lan, disconnect any mapped drives/printers, shutdown the sql app, etc. in steps for testing."

then its time to focus on fundamentals such as dns/wins etc.

but in general, most of the time these problems seem to be related to mapped drives/shares that arent there anymore, that perhaps permissions to the drive/share have changed, etc.

i would start there, and also comb carefully through the event viewer for any dhcp/dns/domain issues.

 

[rvnguy]

jimp56,

Followed this post. A star for you for your "spot on" analysis of this problem!!!!


rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[jimp56]

rvnguy: thanks for the kind words (and the star!).

johnnymc: report back if you get this sorted out. thanks.

 

[johnnymc]

I was wrong about it not effecting the local log-on. I can log on as the local admin and it takes several minutes to open a folder on the local hard drive. I must have just been lucky when I tried it after the post above.

Really weird. I flushed the dns and then tried to hit the shared drive and got in fast. I rebooted and when it came back up it was slow again.

 

[johnnymc]

I took 2 of the 5 computers having the issue and I completely wiped and reloaded them with Win XP servicepack 2. I installed office 2003 and updated both. I installed them back at the users desk and they seemed to run fine for about 5 minutes and then the whole issue started again.

Even if I open the local hard drive and try to bring up the properties of a local folder it takes several minutes.

 

[jimp56]

see if anything in this FAQ can help:

http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?pid=779&fid=4784