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Entire System Painfuly SLOW


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#1
drater66

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My wife bought a small business that came with a computer. The computer has always been very slow and shortly after it ended up being infected. I had a guy do a complete clean and reinstall, (he added XP), I also told him how slow it always was and he added more memory. It’s an older Dell Dimension with a Pentium 4; 1.6GHz ;1.6Ghz, 1.25 GH Ram.

It’s painfully slow, like over a minute to do anything from launching the internet, opening docs, or anything. I know it’s not a high performance set up but not that much is asked of it and I know It should run better than this.

I’d like to just toss it but can’t afford a new one at this time, so hopefully you guys can help me out.
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#2
The Skeptic

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If the computer was reformatted, XP reinstalled(as I understand from your post)and RAM added, then the problem could be with the hard disk. If I am wrong and the computer was not formatted then you wasted your money. Anyway, please do the following: Go to Device Manager and click the (+) sign near IDE/ATA ATAPI controllers. Double click Primary IDE channel and click the Advanced tab. Please report what is written in Current Transfer Mode. Repeat and report Secondary IDE channel.
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#3
drater66

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Thanks for the reply

Primary IDE
"Ultra DMA Mode 5"

Secondary IDE
"Ultra DMA Mode 2"
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#4
drater66

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…also I was watching my task manager to see what was running and it seems like MsMpENG.exe and SVChost.exe Network are using up a lot of CPU (mostly SVChost.exe), I know SVChost is actuly a bunch of stuff but I don’t know how to check what exactly it is?

-Justin
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#5
phillpower2

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Download and run Autoruns from here http://technet.micro...s/bb963902.aspx
Delete anything that says "File Not Found" then download and run TFC from here; http://www.geekstogo...ds&showfile=187 if your computer does not reboot automatically after running TFC do it manually, this will basically tidy up your HDD.
The information on svchost.exes below is FYI and I am not suggesting you either delete or disable any of these files.

Why Are There So Many svchost.exes Running?
If you’ve ever taken a look at the Services section in control panel you might notice that there are a Lot of services required by Windows. If every single service ran under a single svchost.exe instance, a failure in one might bring down all of Windows… so they are separated out.

Those services are organized into logical groups, and then a single svchost.exe instance is created for each group. For instance, one svchost.exe instance runs the 3 services related to the firewall. Another svchost.exe instance might run all the services related to the user interface, and so on.

So What Can I Do About It?

You can trim down unneeded services by disabling or stopping the services that don’t absolutely need to be running. Additionally, if you are noticing very heavy CPU usage on a single svchost.exe instance you can restart the services running under that instance.

The biggest problem is identifying what services are being run on a particular svchost.exe instance… we’ll cover that below.

If you are curious what we’re talking about, just open up Task Manager and check the “Show processes from all users” box:

Checking From the Command Line (Vista or XP Pro)

If you want to see what services are being hosted by a particular svchost.exe instance, you can use the tasklist command from the command prompt in order to see the list of services.

tasklist /SVC

The problem with using the command line method is that you don’t necessarily know what these cryptic names refer to.

Checking in Task Manager in Vista

You can right-click on a particular svchost.exe process, and then choose the “Go to Service” option.

This will flip over to the Services tab, where the services running under that svchost.exe process will be selected:

The great thing about doing it this way is that you can see the real name under the Description column, so you can choose to disable the service if you don’t want it running.

Using Process Explorer in Vista or XP

You can use the excellent Process Explorer utility from Microsoft/Sysinternals to see what services are running as a part of a svchost.exe process.

Hovering your mouse over one of the processes will show you a popup list of all the services:

Or you can double-click on a svchost.exe instance and select the Services tab, where you can choose to stop one of the services if you choose.

Disabling Services

Open up Services from the administrative tools section of Control Panel, or type services.msc into the start menu search or run box.

Find the service in the list that you’d like to disable, and either double-click on it or right-click and choose Properties.

Change the Startup Type to Disabled, and then click the Stop button to immediately stop it.

You could also use the command prompt to disable the service if you choose. In this command “trkwks” is the Service name from the above dialog, but if you go back to the tasklist command at the beginning of this article you’ll notice you can find it there as well.

sc config trkwks start= disabled

Edited by phillpower2, 16 August 2010 - 03:51 PM.

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#6
drater66

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not seeing anything called "Autoruns" from that link?
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#7
phillpower2

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My apologies, wrong link :)
Correct link http://technet.micro...s/bb963902.aspx
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#8
The Skeptic

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Hi.

1: IDE mode of operation is OK.

2: Has the computer been formatted("clean install")? Please let us know. A newly formatted computer shouldn't act like in your description.

3: "MsMpENG.exe" is a windows Defender file. The program is very heavy for a computer like yours, especially if you have an antivirus installed and running, and I suggest that you uninstall it. You don't need it.

4: Re. SVChost, please follow phillpower2 instructions.

4: Do you have any peripherals installed (printer. web cam, etc).
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#9
123Runner

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To add to what The Skeptic asked.....
What anti-virus are you using? Some are memory hogs.

Lets also try running chkdsk.
Go to

Start and then to Run
Type in Chkdsk /r Note the space between k and /
Click Enter ...It will probably ask if you want to do this on the next reboot...click Y
If the window doesn't shutdown on its own then reboot the system manually. On reboot the system will start the chkdsk operation
This one will take longer then chkdsk /f

Note... there are 5 stages...
It may appear to hang at a certain percent for a hour or more or even back up and go over the same area...this is normal...
DO NOT SHUT YOUR COMPUTER DOWN WHILE CHKDSK IS RUNNING OR YOU CAN HAVE SEVERE PROBLEMS
This can take several hours to complete.
When completed it will boot the system back into windows.

Let me know if this fixes the problem
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#10
drater66

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Hi.

1: IDE mode of operation is OK.

2: Has the computer been formatted("clean install")? Please let us know. A newly formatted computer shouldn't act like in your description.

3: "MsMpENG.exe" is a windows Defender file. The program is very heavy for a computer like yours, especially if you have an antivirus installed and running, and I suggest that you uninstall it. You don't need it.

4: Re. SVChost, please follow phillpower2 instructions.

4: Do you have any peripherals installed (printer. web cam, etc).


Yes it was a "clean" install, the only peripheral is a printer.

Windos Defender is the only antivirus installed.
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#11
The Skeptic

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Try to uninstall Windows Defender and install Avast or Avira instead.

Download Everst from my links below. Install the program and click Motherboard and then SPD. Right at the top there is a device description. Please copy and paste. We want to see your RAM's volume and speed.

Click Storage on Everest and then click Logical Drives. Please copy the information from the right hand side. We want to see your hard disk total volume and free space.
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#12
drater66

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Device Description
DIMM1: Micron Tech. 8VDDT3264AG-265G4

Field Value
Memory Module Properties
Module Name Micron Tech. 8VDDT3264AG-265G4
Serial Number 69926C52h
Manufacture Date Week 26 / 2005
Module Size 256 MB (1 rank, 4 banks)
Module Type Unbuffered
Memory Type DDR SDRAM
Memory Speed PC2100 (133 MHz)
Module Width 64 bit
Module Voltage SSTL 2.5
Error Detection Method None
Refresh Rate Reduced (7.8 us), Self-Refresh

Memory Timings
@ 133 MHz 2.5-3-3-6 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS)
@ 100 MHz 2.0-2-2-5 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS)

Memory Module Features
Early RAS# Precharge Not Supported
Auto-Precharge Not Supported
Precharge All Not Supported
Write1/Read Burst Not Supported
Buffered Address/Control Inputs Not Supported
Registered Address/Control Inputs Not Supported
On-Card PLL (Clock) Not Supported
Buffered DQMB Inputs Not Supported
Registered DQMB Inputs Not Supported
Differential Clock Input Supported
Redundant Row Address Not Supported

Memory Module Manufacturer
Company Name Micron Technology, Inc.
Product Information http://www.micron.co....jsp?path=/DRAM


Drive Drive Type File System Total Size Used Space Free Space % Free Volume Serial
A: Removable Disk
C: Local Disk NTFS 38138 MB 11805 MB 26333 MB 69 % 6CEE-A472
D: Optical Drive
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#13
The Skeptic

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The memory volume in your computer is minimal (256 MB) and very slow (PC2100). It is far below the requirements that a computer needs to run modern programs. If you do not want to spend any money, then the only advice that I can give you is to stop everything that is running in the background, including your antivirus. This is definitely a last resort idea but it can help somewhat. Watch carefully internet sites that you go into and run your antivirus manually every week or so.

To disable all these programs click Start and then RUN. Type MSCONFIG and press Enter. Check Selective Mode and click the STARTUP option in the drop-down menu. Uncheck everything, Apply and reboot.
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#14
123Runner

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Evidently the "guy" that reinstalled the OS and added more memory didn't add the memory.
Either that or the comp is not recognizing the memory or a bad ram slot.

I also told him how slow it always was and he added more memory. It’s an older Dell Dimension with a Pentium 4; 1.6GHz ;1.6Ghz, 1.25 GH Ram.


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