Windows XP Performance

I have a Sony Vaio desktop running Windows XP and when I first bought it some years ago it was a fast as anything around and the Pentium IV was more than adequate. Since going on line with AOL the whole thing has gone into snail speed at boot up but after about 15 mins it settles down and works fine. I've stripped out Norton completely and replaced with McAfee which made a big difference and also removed SpyBot Search and Destroy which had some sort of TeaTimer which was always runing in background. It appears that something else is running in background at boot up as the Hard Drive light is flashing away for ages. Any idea of what is going on. I run C-Cleaner regularly to clear out temporary internet files and clean the regisrty but something is still going on in background. Also when I switch off I get several error messages about dll files not starting becasue the system is closing down. I know my system is sick but the answer cannot be to reinstall Windows which is a major activity.

 

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Well you seem to have many problems there. First of all I don't like Mcafee or Norton and to get rid of everything they have put intop your machine is very hard but can be done.

Firststep.

Go to start then to run then type in msconfig then go to "services" tab and look to see what is running. Turn off everything that Mcafee and Norton are running by unchecking them then click the OK button but do not restart your machine yet waith until the next thing I tell you about.

Then go to "startup" tab and see what is running on startup and close everything by unchecking everything then click OK and restart your computer. You won't lose anything so do not worry about that happening.

After it restarts go to the start then go to "all programs' open that and find "accessories" then open that and find "system tools" then find "disk cleanup" and run that program. When it opens check every box on the left side to be sure everything is removed that shouldn't be there.

After that program stops go back into "system tools" once again and look for the "defragmentor" and run it , follow the instructions and then run that program again. Defragging should be done weekly at least sio make sure you keep defragging your computer wbenever you can weekly.

That should take care of many problems, now go to this link and follow the instructions and be very patient with this because it will take some time to do its job right. Do the "Free Scan" OK.

http://shop.trendmicro.com/trialpay/?utm_source=Housecall&utm_campaign=TrialPay

 

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Thanks for the info. cosmic. I'll just print it off and try it at home. To get rid of Norton I used the unistaller program from the web which is supposed to get rid of everything much better than Windows can. Which anti virus do you use? I think Mccafee is fine because it's a much smaller program and I certainly need something

 

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AOL has a lot of software that comes with it which in all honesty you don't really need. You should be able to connect to the internet via an AOL server without using most of their bulky programs, unless of course you are extremely into AOL as a whole. (Personally it wouldn't be my choice of ISP but I know some people in some area's of the world don't have much of a choice, especially if they are off the beaten track.)

You can get a decent idea of what should be running in your process list by visiting www.blackviper.com the guy that created the site has spent many years turning processes on and off to work out how to lessen what loads during bootup, just make sure you note down any changes you make since some like the UPnP server would be necessary if you were connecting things like Camera's or External drives.

If you get real stuck, you should be able to pickup a copy of Hijackthis! from online and create an output log file of what's running on your system. It makes it a lot easier to aid people by seeing what they have running to identify what they can do about lessening the load.

 

It is AOL. Since you probably have another ISP too providing cabel, you can use both, AOL for email and special activity and a webbrowser for internet surfing.

 

Windows is an abomination, a curse, a virulent diease and Mac is the cure. Vaccinate us!

 

Fuck Mac, overpriced crap. By the way you were very helpful for the OP....

 

Even though over 90 percent of the computers use Windows, interesting comment you make.

 

I do a clean install about every 6 months. I tend to install lots of crap which ends up bogging down windows and in my experience, dedictaing ~3 hrs to format & install is better than troubleshooting & trying to fix. Note: I am also very disciplined about storing data on a different drive (than the install drive) and backing up data regularly.

 

What are the specs on your machine? I need to know three things:

*CPU (processor) speed
*How much Ram
*what video card (display adapter) are you running


Also --- you can see which processes are hogging up the most resources, and turn them off (if they aren't crucial).....
Right click on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, click on "Task Manager", Click on the tab that says "Processes", and click on the listbox-category-button that says "mem Usage" so that it appears in descending order.

You can look up each process using google to see if you can disable/uninstall it. For example, do you *really* need iTuneshelper.exe running in the background at all times? Do you need 3rd party mouse pointer configurators and registry monitors, and expired antivirus system tray apps, and "CD Burner assistants", and AIM instant messeger, and two different programs managing your wireless card?

 

This only works if you don't install lots of programs that you actually use. Otherwise it is a hassle to put them back all the time... Unless you have 2 HDs....

 

Or, you can just image your main drive.

Problems solved.

There's nothing like a good clean install.
Oh, and by the way, that means formatting as well, not just re-installing...

 

As others have suggested, the best thing for you is probably to backup any data you want to keep, then reformat your hard drive and reinstall windows. You might be able to fix it if you spend a lot of time tediously messing with your registry, disk cleanup utilities, etc, but you will probably get better results in less time if you just reformat/reinstall.

You might want to think about partitioning your hard drive into two separate drives, one for the operating system and one for your data. That will make it much less of a hassle if you want to do a fresh OS install in the future. Or you can get a 16 GB USB flash drive for about $20, which is plenty of backup space for many people.

On a side note, the teatimer program that you mentioned shutting down is (in my opinion) a great utility that you should probably leave running. It uses almost zero resources, and it will help stop crapware from infesting your computer.

 

I don't usually re-start my system over and over like that. In fact when i had vista ultimate pre-installed (i bought new customized HP desktop last year), I had it running for at least 7 months with occasional rebooting (stupid power failures due to Florida tropical storms) ... and it worked fine, after 1.5 years, i decided i needed a fresh start (not that my system was slow) but just that i was on RAID 1 (250 Gig) and was loosing out on 250 gigs for no reason (this one's not a server anyhow); so i re-installed a fresh vista ultimate 64 bit edition ... works fine so far *touch wood*.

I would suggest reboots only once a week or something if you can ...

Rick

 

Just Curious Did you fix your PC yet? :shrug: