[melgor]

Hi Everyone

I am running XP SP3, my CPU is 3.06GHz and RAM is 1.49GB

I have recently noticed that downloading is extremely slow and also that videos are not running smoothly

I run avast and malwarebytes and a full scan on these has not revealed any problems

I have therefore concluded (could be horibly wrong because my technical knowledge is only a little above zero) that something somewhere is consuming too much of my resources

Because the problem is fairly recent I thought my first step should be to try and restore to a time when everything was working ok. I entered System Restore and all restore points are showing in bold, however I have tried 3 different restore points and every time the system states that it cannot restore to that point.

Could this be the same problem which is causing the download and video problems, if so what do you suggest I do now.

One point I would add is that I know that my pc is cluttered although there is still lots of free space on my hard drive. Can anyone suggest where I can read reliable instructions on how to clean up my pc. I am not being insulting when I say reliable I only say this because in the past Advanced System Care and CCleaner have both been recommended to me but since reading this forum I now realise that cleaning the registry using these can actually be very harmful.

I have actually used these programs recently but this was after I noticed the download and video problems.

Any assistance would be highly appreciated and it would help enormously if it was not too technical

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Get rid of these

Advanced System Care and CCleaner

What browser do you use and is it up to date with the newest version?
Is this a laptop or desktop?
Branded or custom built?
If branded what brand, make and model?
If custom what brand, make and model is the motherboard?
What is your hard drive capacity and what is the free space right now?
How much total memory installed?




Download Autoruns from the link in my signature below:

1: Extract the Autoruns Zip file contents to a folder.
2: Double-click the "Autoruns.exe".
3: Click on the "Everything" tab
4: Remove any entries that mention "File Not Found" by right-clicking the entry and select Delete.
5: Go to File then to Export As or Save in some versions.
6: Save AutoRuns.txt file to known location like your Desktop.
7: Attach to your next reply.

[rshaffer61]

Get rid of these

Advanced System Care and CCleaner

What browser do you use and is it up to date with the newest version?
Is this a laptop or desktop?
Branded or custom built?
If branded what brand, make and model?
If custom what brand, make and model is the motherboard?
What is your hard drive capacity and what is the free space right now?
How much total memory installed?




Download Autoruns from the link in my signature below:

1: Extract the Autoruns Zip file contents to a folder.
2: Double-click the "Autoruns.exe".
3: Click on the "Everything" tab
4: Remove any entries that mention "File Not Found" by right-clicking the entry and select Delete.
5: Go to File then to Export As or Save in some versions.
6: Save AutoRuns.txt file to known location like your Desktop.
7: Attach to your next reply.

[SleepyDude]

Get rid of these

Advanced System Care and CCleaner

...
Download Autoruns from the link in my signature below:

1: Extract the Autoruns Zip file contents to a folder.
2: Double-click the "Autoruns.exe".
3: Click on the "Everything" tab
4: Remove any entries that mention "File Not Found" by right-clicking the entry and select Delete.
...

Rshaffer,

Don't take me wrong but remove *All* the entry's with "File Not Found" isn't a good advice because its documented that Autoruns will show several legit entry's with "File Not Found", this is documented on the Sysinternals forums if i remember correctly.

[rshaffer61]

Ok well that is not a problem and the OP doens't have to do it. Just include the log. I will then instruct on the autoruns on startup only to be removed and nothing more.

[melgor]

May I start by thanking you both, rshaffer and rpaz, for taking the time and trouble to help me, it is much appreciated

I have run Autoruns and attach a summary of the log file. For some reason which I do not understand I could not attach the actual log file so I made a text file summary of all the "Files Not Found", I've also included in this text file a list of all the files which were colour coded red in case these had any particular significance.
 Autoruns Log Summary.txt   3.85KB   288 downloads

I've also attached a System Summary Text file which may or not be of help to you. As the name implies this is a summary of my system.

Now to answer your questions:

1. Browser - 95% of the time I use Firefox (v 14.0.1) but I also have IE8 and Chrome 21.0 installed. All browsers are up to date
2. Desktop
3. Branded - emachine 4260
4. Hard drive - main drive 100GB, 37GB free
recovery drive - 3.19GB, 1.49GB free
external hard drive used for backup and storage 298GB, 47GB free
5. Memory - 1.5GB, will be increasing this to 2GB maximum allowed within 7 days

Hope this helps and look forward to your reply
Gordon

Attached Files

•  System Summary.txt   810bytes   274 downloads

[rshaffer61]

OK not sure what that log for autoruns you have attached as that is not the normal log it will produce.
If you saved the file as the default arn type it will be to big to attach. You need to save it as a txt file and then it will attach with no problem.

[melgor]

ok, sorry about that, I've now saved as text file which is attached

Attached Files

•  AutoRuns Log.txt   52.51KB   250 downloads

[noknojon]

First ->> fully delete this program highlighted by rshaffer61 -
IObit Advanced System Care - The program is generally useless and can cause many problems when combined with other programs

This also applies to any other IObit programs that you may have installed -

[rshaffer61]

Open Autoruns, click on "Logon" tab, and UN-check:

+ "Adobe ARM"
+ "Advanced SystemCare 5"
+ "DAP10" This is useless unless you are on dialup internet connection
+ "DownloadAccelerator"
+ "MSMSGS"
+ "FlashPlayerUpdate"




When done restart computer and then:



Download TFC by OldTimer to your desktop

• Please double-click TFC.exe to run it. (Note: If you are running on Vista, right-click on the file and choose Run As Administrator).
• It will close all programs when run, so make sure you have saved all your work before you begin.
• Click the Start button to begin the process. Depending on how often you clean temp files, execution time should be anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or two. Let it run uninterrupted to completion.
• Once it's finished it should reboot your machine. If it does not, please manually reboot the machine yourself to ensure a complete clean.

Download Auslogics Defrag from the link in my signature below. Auslogics Defrag in my opinion is better because:

It does a more comprehensive job at Defragging
It will actually show you what it is doing
At the end of working it will show you how much speed you picked up
You can view a online log of the files that Auslogics defragged
Please do not run any other Auslogics programs other then this one as they may cause unwanted results.

[melgor]

Hi again and sorry about the delay in replying

I have completed all the above but regret to say that

1. download speed is still a maximum of 15KBsec, this compares to 120KBsec on another desktop I have which is connected to same ISP
2. videos continue to buffer every few seconds whereas they run smoothly without interruption on the other pc
3. in addition I have now lost all the original Restore Points which showed previously

I have run another Full Scan on Avast and MalWareBytes (hence the delay in replying) and these still show No Problems.

I confess to not really understanding the technical aspects of computers so, speaking as a layperson, my gut feelings are that something is running continuously on my pc without permission and thus preventing other programs from working correctly. Because of the positive scan results I am ruling out any external influence so therefore I conclude that one of the programs I have installed is misbehaving.

Is there any way I can test if my gut feeling is right, identify the culprit and repair or delete the offender?

If not then all I can think of is to do one of these 3 options

1. as a last resort repair/reinstall XP - I do have data backup but have never tested my backup hence hesitation and reinstalling everything is always a bind
2. uninstall 1 program at a time, starting with the last used, and test after uninstall. I would prefer to start by deleting the last installed rather than last used first but don't know of any way of geting information on installation dates. Is there any software which would give me this info?
3. hopefully an easier and better way which you could suggest.

I will be installing extra memory (from 1.5GB to 2GB) in a day or 2, do you think this could be part of my problems?

Fingers crossed
Gordon

[rshaffer61]

To early to tell but we have only just begun.


Go to Start then to Run
Type in compmgmt.msc and click Enter
On left side click on Disk Management
On right side you will see you hard drive.
Male sure the window is open all the way on the top right so I can see all the info it has.
Now I need you to take a screenshot and attach it to your next reply. Do the following to take a screenshot while the above is open and showing on your desktop.

To do a screenshot please have click on your Print Screen on your keyboard. It is normally the key above your number pad between the F12 key and the Scroll Lock key
Now go to Start and then to All Programs
Scroll to Accessories and then click on Paint
In the Empty White Area click and hold the CTRL key and then click the V
Go to the File option at the top and click on Save as
Save as file type JPEG and save it to your Desktop
Make sure the window is open all the way so I can see everything on the top right window.


Attach it to your next reply

[melgor]

trust this is ok

Attached Thumbnails

• 

[rshaffer61]

OK your partition that is not named is low on disk space.
Your main OS drive seems to be fine with space so unless it is severely fragmented I doubt that to be your issue.
It would seem you need to work with your browser and we should start by cleaning out the temp files and such. Please do the following and if no better we will clean your dns cache out then.

Download TFC by OldTimer to your desktop

• Please double-click TFC.exe to run it. (Note: If you are running on Vista, right-click on the file and choose Run As Administrator).
• It will close all programs when run, so make sure you have saved all your work before you begin.
• Click the Start button to begin the process. Depending on how often you clean temp files, execution time should be anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or two. Let it run uninterrupted to completion.
• Once it's finished it should reboot your machine. If it does not, please manually reboot the machine yourself to ensure a complete clean.

Background info courtesy of DonnaB Thank you

As for TFC, this is a tidbit of an article I found a while back by a MicroSoft MVP.

TFC (Temp File Cleaner) will clear out all temp folders for all user accounts (temp, IE temp, java, FF, Opera, Chrome, Safari), including Administrator, All Users, LocalService, NetworkService, and any other accounts in the user folder. It also cleans out the %systemroot%\temp folder and checks for .tmp files in the %systemdrive% root folder, %systemroot%, and the system32 folder (both 32bit and 64bit on 64bit OSs). It shows the amount removed for each location found (in bytes) and the total removed (in MB).

Before running, it will stop Explorer and all other running applications. When finished, if a reboot is required the user must reboot to finish clearing any in-use temp files.
-- TFC only cleans temp folders.
-- TFC will not clean URL history, prefetch, or cookies. Depending on how often someone cleans their temp folders, their system hardware, and how many accounts are present, it can take anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or more. TFC will completely clear all temp files where other temp file cleaners may fail.

[melgor]

ok done that, took only a second as I had just done it yesterday
also yesterday I used Auslogics to defrag so that should be ok

sorry to say no improvement

[rshaffer61]

In Microsoft Windows, you can use the command ipconfig /flushdns to flush the DNS resolver cache.
Go to Start and then to Run
Type in cmd and then right click on the command window and then click on Run As Administrator.click
At the command prompt type the following and click Enter:

C:>ipconfig /flushdns

Note the space between the g and the /

When done you should see the following:

Windows IP Configuration
Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.