Our laptop recently picked up a virus that wiped out some dll file that caused us to not be able to connect to the internet. No matter what we did, no connection could be established. So, we tried the Windows XP install disk and used the repair function, it found no errors but after it was completed, we still could not access the internet because of the missing dll file. After trying all of the basics, we decided to crash the system and start out fresh.
What we have is a HP Pavillion ZE-5185 Laptop with a Pentium 4 2.40 GHz processor and 512 mb of RAM and a 60 gig hard drive. We had to wipe the hard drive completely clean and re-install Windows XP Home Edition back onto the computer. We backed everything up that we needed to save and after re-installation of everything (including service pack 2 and approx. 75 other updates), we re-booted the computer and it is running exceptionally slow. We have no add-ons like Webshots, screen savers or anything "extra" to slow it down since it is basically a fresh hard drive.
We have Automatic Updates activated and all other settings set at factory default.
Under the "My Computer" properties, the Used Space is 4.57 GB while the Free Space is 51.3 GB. Indexing Service is enabled along with Drive Compression.
Hitting "Ctrl Alt Delete" and looking at the "Performance" and then the "processes", the System Idle Process hovers between 78-88 while the CPU usage meter stays at around 16-20% until moving the mouse pointer around and then it spikes to about 60% CPU usage or sometimes as high as 100%. When you try to scroll a webpage, oh man, it takes about 3 minutes to scroll all the way down to the bottom. The programs that are running in the background consist of MSN, AIM, and AVG which were running before the wipe clean and never ever had a problem with it.
We have tried Defragmenting, Disk Clean-up, error checking, multiple re-starts, turning off any messenger service and all other programs and it still remains slower than the old Apple II's with 64k worth of memory. Is there anyone here that can help to get this computer running back to normal speed? Any and all help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks for the read.. I know it was long, just trying to give as much info as I possibly can.