[cjv]

I am having a problem with my computer.

This past Monday I tried installing Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf 2004 and Sim City 3000 Unlimited. WHen installing Tiger Woods, the computer kept trying to install Microsoft Works 7.0 as well, and also installed something called MS Access SP2. (I do have Microsoft Office installed on the computer). The next morning (after installing both of these programs, and seemingly also having installed Works 7.0) I noticed that my computer was very VERY slow. I heard periodic spinning of the hard drive that would last up to 5 minutes. It took me about 7 hours to run a disk defragment (which I thought might speed it up initially). I was also getting the Dr. Watson error occasionally. After looking online, I ran a couple of the fixes - running RegClean (which took about 5 minutes), changing the /noexecute to /execute in the boot.ini, running chkdsk /f, and running sfc /scannow to check my windows files. I also did the registry edit that was supposed to fix the problem. Please note, that a lot of people seem to be having this problem in relation to service pack 2 (which I do have installed) and DivX (which I don't have on this system).

Finally, after much difficulty (so slow it seemed like the computer froze, Dr. Watson postmortem debugger errors, etc) I uninstalled Tiger Woods, SimCity, and Work 7.0 (as well as the MS Access program). I also uninstalled a few other programs just to be safe. In some cases, the uninstall ran for a LONG time before working. The only problem was, I still am having these difficulties.

Any help would be appreciated.

Symptons:

Right clicking on files, folders, trashbin, desktop items at best takes a couple of minutes to get the context menu, at worst seemingly freezes the computer (with the hard drive spinning). Sometimes has no effect.

Hard drive seems to start spinning randomly, resulting in a drastic slowdown of all programs, even thought the CPU load (as determined by task manager) is not very high.

Dr. Watson postmortem debugger error messages. Have not noticed anything that consistantly causes this, but something right clicking will, sometimes trying to open multiple web pages.

Increase in boot time - it used to take about 10 seconds of the "Windows XP" intro (with the moving bar), now it takes about 20 to 30 seconds.


At times, there doesn't seem to be any problem. Like right now, I am surfing, typing this, no problems. But then I might do something (like try to empty the trash can, open the start menu, go to the control panel, etc) that will start the problems again.

Things I have done to try to help (some of these tried more than once)

RegClean
RegSeeker (clean the registry)
RegEdit (the registry fix posted online)
Spybot Search and Destroy
Remove potential problem programs
defragment hard drive
chkdsk /f
sfc /scannow
change the boot.ini



Thanks in advance for any help!

Chris

[Advertisements]

Quick followup - I am now running Ad Aware, and it seems to have "stalled" after checking a certain number of objects. It has been stuck on 45922 objects scanned for about 5 minutes now, but the mouse hourglass still indicates that the program is working.

Chris

[cjv]

Quick followup - I am now running Ad Aware, and it seems to have "stalled" after checking a certain number of objects. It has been stuck on 45922 objects scanned for about 5 minutes now, but the mouse hourglass still indicates that the program is working.

Chris

[admin]

Let us take a closer look at what is running on your PC. We'll need you to use a free diagnostic tool (HiJackThis) and post a log as a new topic in the Hijack This forum. It will get a better response there from the people most qualified to analyze logs.

Click the HijackThis Guide in my signature, download it and follow the instructions in the guide. Also see this post.

Most of what it lists will be harmless or even essential, DO NOT delete or modify anything yet! Someone will be along to tell you what steps to take after you post the contents of the scan results.