Posted: 2/6/2005 11:11:50 AM EDT
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For some reason it is really really slow these days. What can I do to make it go faster? Right now I can litterally type two lines of BS before the first line even appears. Patty |
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Virus and ad malware. Scubb it Patty. Start with a updated virus scan. Then download Adaware and run it. There are a lot of programs that will get rid of the ads. Spybot, Microsoft has a beta version. Also you may need more memory. Add some and it will also speed it up. Get rid of old programs that you dont use anymore. Some of them run in the background and use up processor reserve. |
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Also down Spybot - Search & Destory here: www.spybot.info/en/index.html If Spybot finds anything, delete them all. |
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I have done spyware and virius scans on it and do do them daily. I keep them up to date. According to the properties on "My Computer" it shows I'm only using about 20% of my total memory. I'm burning pictures right now so I can take pictures off my hard drive to free up some more but it doesn't seem like that should be the problem. Patty |
Is there a way to check for this? My kids download lots of Lucas Arts games |
That is your hard drive. Right click on My Computer, click on properties, click on the performance tab. What percentage of your system resorces are free? What ARDOC said for running msconfig  |
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What kind of specs on your machine? Operating system, ram, cpu? You should try running a disk defrag. Start, accessories, System tools, Disk Defragment. Takes a while but speeds things up. I personally use norton systemworks windoctor to clean stuff up as well. Oh, and what antivirus are you using? If you are using Norton, it actually slows your pc down quite a bit. I've noticed performance hits on VERY fast pcs when using norton antivirus. You can download AVG 7.0 Free from my site, tallbill.com Click on "clean up your pc". If you go this route, make sure that you uninstall norton antivirus completely and reboot before installing. Phew, thats all I can think of at the moment. |
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Good advice for some, horrible advice for most.. most people use IE cuz they are used to it and it works for them. Keeping IE updated regularly (like any browser) prevents most problems. I've never ever had a problem with this type of stuff myself. Learning a whole new browser is a PITA.. |
That has to be hard drive space. What Operating system are you using? My directions should have allowed you to see how much RAM was free (system resorces). This will work on Win98 and ME, I am not sure about XP. |
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Your hard drive won't factor much in slowdown unless it is nearly full, as long as you have plenty of space on it it should be ok. What OS are you running? once you have cleared away adware and spyware you should check for programs running in the background. Games virtually never do this, it's normally communication software (ICQ or MS Messenger and similar programs) or device software (mouse, keyboard, detachable drives, etc.) many of these install software that you don't need. look in the lower right corner of your screen by the clock, how many icons are there? All of those are memory resident, some you may need others you may not. |
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My kids download lots of Lucas Arts games That right there is the source of 95% of all computer problems. Games are full of spy and malware, particularly free downloads. Games change video and other settings. msconfig should show what is being started on bootup. Also, you can do a Ctrl-Alt-Delete, and bring up the Close Program dialog, and see what is running. Any that you do not know about, you can look up here: www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm |
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That is your problem ETA Something is using up all of you RAM |
In XP hit CTRL-ALT-Delete, and click the performance tab in the box that comes up. You can also check all the running processes in this box. |
512 Ram is pretty good, you shouldn't need more (I'm still only using 128 MB). There may be something out there that can find all of the crap that gets snuck into your system, but I haven't seen it yet. You probably have things running in the background that you don't know about or are deliberately hiding. If I were you, I would save all of the stuff that you have on it ie; pics, music, and then run the PC recovery that is on your D drive. This will return it to the factory settings. |
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What to do and how to do it somewhat depends upon exactly what system you are running. Assuming its Windows 2000 or XP start by running the task manager. You do this by left-clicking on the status bar at the bottom of the screen and selecting "Task Manager". Now click on the "Performance" tab. You want to see the CPU usage graph at a fairly low level if you are not running anything else - just a few percent at most. If its higher than that, click the "Processes" tab, and look down the list to see which process(s) (Image Name) has the highest value in the CPU column. They should all be at, or close to zero except the "System Idle Process". Note any ones which are higher. The total number of lines (processes) should be no more than about 25. If it is significantly higher, you need to look at what processes are being started up automatically when you boot the machine. Go back to the Performance tab - the lower graph shows memory use, it should be low(ish). Not above 50% in any case. My guess is that you are going to find a LOT of extra processes running. If you have SpyBot (make certain its the latest version - 1.3 I think), switch to advanced mode, select Tools, then System Startup. From here, you can enable/disable stuff which starts when you boot. Click on each line, and you get some explanation on the right-hand side of the screen as to what it is, and if you need it or not. Disable that stuff you think you don't need. You might also want to grab the beta version of Microsoft's anti-spyware software from their website. Its actually not bad, and in its advanced tools section, under "System Explorers" there is their version of the startup configuration tool. My guess is that you have LOTS of extra processes running - this is always the case when kids have been randomly downloading stuff (as well as tons of spywear, but you say you have removed all this...). Once there is no spyware, the start-up process list is about 20 or so long and you have done a virus check with an up to date visus scanning list, and only then, do we start to worry about other things, like adding memory. It probably IS worth defragmenting the disk - that can make a difference - but probably not to the level you seem to be experiencing. |
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Run MSCONFIG, see what is says. 512mb should be enough for most things but I run 1G of memory, I am running 35 processes including norton, yahoo messenger, MSN mess, Gmail notifier, and about 4 pop blockers plus some more. Look on the msconfig screen and uncheck the boxes for the processes that you do not need. IF you still have problems, it is a virus or a newly installed program that needs more physical ram to operate but I dont know of any program that requires more than 512mb. Defrag your HD again too, I do mine about, when I remember too and I have a ton of programs and my comp runs fine (except for the POST errors but that is another prob, looks like it is heat related) 
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Some of the spyware/adware uses 'system restore' to reinstall itself after it is removed. I'm not sure how to tell you to check for that ( or get around it, if that's the problem) However I had the "bettertinternet" malware, and Lavasoft Adaware came up with a tool to remove it. If you run the msconfig and click the 'startup' tab, you should see a screen like the one above this post. When you see it, hit alt-printscreen to put it in your clipboard. Then you can paste that into a .bmp or better yet a .jpg file and upload it to your photo hosting, then include it in a post like any other picture. That way the resident whizzes here can see what you have going. |
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all right ARFCOM Experts - I scanned disk, checked with viruses using both my McAffee and the new one suggested here, I also updated spyware and scanned [removed 63 potential problems] and will now shut down, reboot and defrag. Fingers crossed! Patty over and out! |
It is working much quicker! Thank you for your help! |
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There's usually not one "AHA! *That's* your problem" solutions when it comes to perceived slowdowns. Based on the description of your system, it sounds like a fairly new machine, so it ought to perform fairly quickly. When there are slowdowns, one thing to take note of is if the IDE LED light on the front of the PC is lighting up a lot (this is the LED that's active when you are using the HDD or the CD/DVD drive). This shouldn't be happening unless you're running a bunch of programs. It's an indication that your HDD is being used as swap space because you have run out of free memory. Windows is then using your HDD as spare "memory" which is horrendously slow. Some applications which might normally cause you to use a lot of swap space is using Photo/Video editing software with large files. If this is not the case, and you're still swapping a lot, then one of your installed programs might have memory leaks in the code which is using memory ineffciently. There's no easy way to find those kind of issues. If you have recently installed a new program or new hardware, you might think about uninstalling it and see if that's the cause of the problem. If not, then it's quite possible that malware is a cause. It's obviously part of your problem as you have noted. There's nothing as detrimental to a PC's health as kids with a happy "download" finger. I hear it from my sister-in-law all the time. Viruses, etc from my teenage niece. Messenger programs like those from AOL are a huge security issue. Then there's all those free programs they download, which are usually infested with all kinds of spyware as part of the package. They install themselves in the background, and are the devil's spawn. Your task manager looked fairly normal, but some of those programs hide themselves from the task manager. Defrag and disk scan are good tools to run as well. Usually it's a recently installed program or hardware that's the culprit. How long has this installation of XP been running? There comes a time when Windows will bog down and nothing short of a reformat/reinstall will cure the problem. The "uptime" can be shortened quite a bit by installing and uninstalling all kinds of programs. A word of advice for making reformat/reinstalls easier: Partition you HDD to keep all the programs in one partition, and all your personal, irreplaceable data on another partition. My HDD has 20% on the C: drive, 10% on the D drive, andthe rest on E. Whenever I have a personal document, it gets stored on the D drive and backed up once a month on a DVD+RW. Nothing goes in the "My Docments" folder. If I need to wipe out my windows install, I reformat the C: drive ONLY, and the data on D: and E: stays intact. I can reintall Windows and everything and my personal data will be completely untouched. This has worked for me quite well over the years. [Edited to add] Like others have recommended, use Mozilla's free Firefox webbrowser, and their Thunderbird e-mail client. You wouldn't believe how much more robust Firefox is when it comes to preventing spyware/malware infestations. I would routinely get 40-50 items show up in AdAware between runs, but that has dropped to about 5 between runs since using Firefox. Highly recommended.... |
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Zhukov thank you for your time and info. How do I seperate my hard drive like that? When I first got my system there was two "hard drives" like you mentioned but it started to run slowly and my son and neighbor boy [insert unchristain thoughts] re formated my hard drive to "fix" that problem. Needless to say - I wasn't happy and my system has never ran the same as before. I do have it working fairly well right now and it's moving so much nicer. The kids are warned not to download anymore games and they won't. I downloaded firefox but havne't had time to check it out yet. Patty |
Think of your hard disk as a file cabinet. A partition is like a drawer. Most HDDs have only one partition when they come from the factory. You can subdivide the HDD into partitions at install time using "fdisk" with older versions of windows from a boot floppy, or from the Windows install menu for XP. A nice utility for doing so once you have Windows installed already and don't want to reformat the hard drive is a program called "Partition Magic". It allows you to repartition without losing all your data. I used it on my laptop to break up the single 40GB HDD into a 30 and 10GB partition. Are you using FAT32 or NTFS as your file system? Double click "My Computer" or go to "Start" -> "Run" and type in "explorer" (no quotes). Find your hard disk (C: or D:), right click on that drive and select "Properties". It should list the file system at the top of the info as either NTFS or FAT32. NTFS is preferred, but I don't kow if you can change that unless you're doing a clean reinstall. So the PC never ran great since they reinstalled Windows, huh? There is probably no real good solution except starting over with a clean install by someone who really knows what they're doing. Computer nerds are your friends. 
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