[floss001]

http://www.geekstogo...43#entry1324943

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It could help if you describe what the problems are.

[The Skeptic]

It could help if you describe what the problems are.

[floss001]

Hi

defrag took nearly 6 hours to complete. Chkdsk took about 3 hours yesterday. The mouse appears eratic and often becomes invisible despite updating drivers. Boot up takes 2 mins 26 secs and then icons don't always appear straight away. Even once icons appear programs are slow to open. Once everything is up and running then things can be OK and work quickly but then some internet browsers will freeze. Closing down open browsers can also be difficult and need to use task manager.

Have also defraged with diskeeper lite and took about two hours.

There is no malaware problem

[floss001]

HAVE ALSO UNCHECKED "ALLOW INDER SERVICE" IN PROPERTIES FOR C DRIVE

[The Skeptic]

Did the problems start gradually or suddenly, after the installation of any update or service pack?

What antivirus are you using. Did it cause any problems? What firewall.


please do the following: (For most downloads use links from the list below).

1: Click Start > run. Type msconfig. Check Selective Mode and click the "startup" tab. Uncheck everything which is not essential. Leave only antimalware programs (if you change your mind latter you can reactivate those programs). Confirm and reboot. Upon rebooting a message will show up. Please check it and continue. For laptop users: do not uncheck items that clearly relate to the operation of the computer.

2: In Add/Remove programs, in Control Panel, uninstall all unnecessary toolbars such as Yahoo, google and others. Latter on you can download them again.

3: If you have Internet Explorer 7 installed as a windows update, uninstall it in add/remove programs in control panel. This will roll you back to internet explorer 6. Latter on you can download it again as a Windows Update.

4: Download and install CCleaner. Do not install the Yahoo toolbar that comes packed with the program. In addition to items checked by default please check "Old Prefetch Data". Run the "cleaner" and "registry" options a number of times until nothing is left to be cleaned. Use the backup option (in "registry") when prompted to do so.

5: Run disk defragmantation. For this operation I use and recommend Auslogic Disk Defrag. Alternatively you can run Microsoft's defragmenter.

6: Download and run PageDefrag. This program defrags registry and page files which are not defragmented by other means. Set it to work upon next boot and reboot.

7: Press ctr+alt+del to enter task manager. Under Performance tab look for "physical memory". Please report Total and Available.

8: Enter "My Computer", right-click drive C: and then Properties. Please report Capacity and Free Space of your hard disk (each partition, if you have more then one).

9: Go to Device Manager, expand IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers. Click on "Primary IDE Channel" and click "Advanced Setting". "Transfer Mode" should show "DMA if Available" for device 0 and device 1. If it shows "PIO", Right click again the "Primary IDE channel" and choose to uninstall it. Reboot and let Windows reload the driver. Repeat the procedure with Secondary IDE channel.

10: Download HD Tune and under Benchmarking run a complete performance test. Please report Average data transfer for the entire test.

[floss001]

hI

ran defrag earlier using diskeeper lite - do I nee to run again

have already tried msconfid and unchecked ebeverything - made no diff

ran c cleaner earlier and again just now.

Physical memory is total 1047780 available 553036 system cache 618012

Capacity on c drive is 58gb free and on d drive more than 60gb

all toolbars deleted

IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers - WERE AS DESCRIBED


aVERAGE DATA TRANSFER IS 1.8MS

problems occured before but but boot problems related to sp3 service pack I think. Programs were just running slow before. Was using Norton INTERNET SECUTITY 2008. have uninstalled it and now using Norton V 2007.

Will send results of reg defrag after reboot

[The Skeptic]

Service pack 3 can be a poison to long running, loaded computers. In your case it's even worse because the computer showed problems before. In addition, it's very important to install SP-3 correctly, closing all open applications including antivirus.

Data transfer rate is extremely low.

Please do the following:

1: Switch off your moden/router and uninstall Norton altogether. See what happens.

2: What firewall are you using? If it's norton then it will be removed together with other parts of the program. If it's another, other then Microsoft's, please write down the name and uninstall it.

3: Uninstall SP-3 in Add/Remove programs in control panel.

Edited by The Skeptic, 06 September 2008 - 01:22 PM.

[floss001]

uninstalled norton and sp3. Loaded norton back again but screwed pc big time with slower boot than before and icons not appearing. Task manager processes showed that there were 32-35 processes at startup with svchost repeated several times. Once some of these were closed the icons began to appear.

uninstaled norton again and am now using laptop to await further instruction.

[The Skeptic]

The number of processes is normal. So is the fact that several svchost run at the same time. Please explain what happened when you uninstalled Norton. Was the computer running better?

Download Process Explorer from the link below. Run it and expand all options (click the + signs). Write down which process takes lots of cpu power (say, above 10%) and the closure of which improves performance without starting other problems. It's somewhat time consuming but worthwhile trying.

If you have windows XP installation CD insert it into the drive and click Exit when it shows up. Click Start > Run. In the command line type sfc /scannow and press Enter. Windows will start checking system files, comparing them to those on the disk. It will replace corrupt files and will install missing ones. The process can take sometime. At the end the dialog box will just disappear.

[floss001]

after uninstalling norton boot up was still slow. but not as before. Windows took 1min53secs and the settings were from login finished after a further 30 secods which is about 30 secs quicker.

None of the download links you provide work ie they are not linked.

[floss001]

going blind found the links.

[floss001]

things going from bad to work. saved process exp onto pen drive but would not run. Have somehow managed to delete ethernet connection so have lost internet on pc. Only way to run program is to run it directly from my pc. Will have to bear with me. Too many late nighs and starting to make silly errors.

[The Skeptic]

I really don't want to despair you but honestly, I feel that you are wasting your time. Had the computer been with me I would have gone to clean format without hesitation. I intended to tell you that after you try running the system file checker (sfc) and suggesting that you run XP repair which I am sure would fail. Seeing the time and efforts that you spend on this computer in two forums, I really think that you should consider this option seriously. I have no doubt that you will end there anyway.


Regards

The Skeptic

[floss001]

unable to run process explorer, coming up with error message asking to debug. WILL try another download, this failed also. Any ideas.

[The Skeptic]

Nothing more then in my previous post.