XP Insane slowdowns - Any ideas?

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Hodgkinson wrote:
I've experienced this in the past, but just recently it’s started to become both more frequent and rather annoying. After, say, extracting a big zip file, or maybe handling photos, or a whole variety of other tasks, the system almost, within a matter of seconds, grinds to a virtual halt. For instance, it takes about 30 seconds after clicking the start menu for the menu to appear, and the only way around this is to reboot, after which the systems perks up again.

Looking in the system logs, during this time there’s whole rows of "avgntflt" timeout errors on all the background processes, including explorer.exe. (AntiVir Avira antivirus, no virus detected on full system scans)

The system is a 1Ghz PIII, 768MB RAM, XP SP2 (No internet access, so no other patches).

Now I bet our miggys don’t suffer from this problem ;-) And rebooting should be certainly easier :-)

Ideas?

Thanks,
Hodgkinson.

Dunno whether the antivirus program you use, also detects adware. Maybe it's worth looking at that. Also, you might want to look at the system processes by hitting "ctrl-alt-del" and look under the tab "Processes". If there's a process which takes a lot of percentages of cpu power, you might look that program up on the internet, whether other persons have similar problems or not. Or you might want to uninstall it.
If you can't find anything, you might want to look at the services which are running. This can be done like this: Start Menu -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services. You might want to stop every service which is not directly necessary to run the system, and, if your system has become, search for the bad service by restarting every service one by one.
You might also want to look at the performance logs, which also can be found under Administrative tools.
And besides that, let scandisk scan your diskdrive, and also defrag your harddisk (this can take very long, and requires a fair amount of free disk space).

[Speelgoedmannetje]

bloodline wrote:
If it's been twelve month since your last reinstall... then I'm sorry to say, it's time to back everything up and reinstall windows. 'Tis the way of Windows.

Not necessarily, I've had my laptop not being reinstalled for more than a year, until I installed Visual Studio 2008 on it (got it for a low price, special student offer). Visual Studio 2008 really screwed up my system. I didn't have to pay much for it, but to think of paying the full price for such a disastrous product which IMHO couldn't even be in Alpha stage :pissed:

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Hodgkinson wrote:
I use Diskeeper Lite for the defrag, which is pretty good.

Are you sure this very program couldn't be the cause of this mess?

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Hodgkinson wrote:
It's part of the "Microsoft Back Office" tools range...Having said that, if its made by Microsoft... :crazy:

We've used it for some years on various different systems and never experienced these problems before.

I have used Visual Studio 2005 too without problems, until microsoft added new 'cool features' in 2008. :pissed:
So you might have just gotten a very wrong update.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Hodgkinson wrote:

Apart from viruses, what other malware is likely to cause an appreciable threat/slowdowns on a non-internet PC?

Virusscanners...

[Speelgoedmannetje]

It's funny but really, often virusscanners are to blame for excessive slowdowns. Well, I've often experienced by helping people who've bought a pc with pre-installed virusscanners from Norton or McAfee. A lot of pre-installed software is trash anyway, btw.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Hodgkinson wrote:
> Norton or McAfee

Hello...Muhahaha...(Norton in particular).
The free stuff usually works without too many problems. Fork out for Norton and it does just about as much damage to your system as the viruses :crazy:

Indeed, and that's the thing I was saying. But I haven't tried your virusscanner yet. It might be the cause of the problem.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Hodgkinson wrote:
Ah, (Re a Packard-Bell PC) then there's the demos that come pre-installed, and the in-built registration reminders that flash up over whatever it is you're working on.

Build a PC yourself anyday I say...Then at least you've got all the driver disks for any re-installs (Heh, as mentioned).

My Dell laptop was fine, though, with a minimum of crap pre-installed.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

metalman wrote:

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
It's funny but really, often virusscanners are to blame for excessive slowdowns. Well, I've often experienced by helping people who've bought a pc with pre-installed virusscanners from Norton or McAfee. A lot of pre-installed software is trash anyway, btw.

Its probably your virus scanner.

I got rid of AVG because of excessive slowdown.

Switched to Threatfire Antivirus

That's what I said, I've noticed by other people who ask me to clean their computer, that it's the case.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

@Moto;
A: A Mac is way too expensive to buy
B: A Mac is way too expensive to have, because for every little program you have to pay
C: Linux may be a pain in the arse from time to time, but if you use well supported hardware it won't be much of a fuss.

Don't get me wrong, I like Apple's efforts to make a decent OS. Though I really can't pay it. :-(

@Metalman, ah ok, I interpreted as an advice.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

motorollin wrote:

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
A: A Mac is way too expensive to buy

On the Apple Store Mac Minis start at £399, or £375 if you're a student. I don't think that's a huge amount more than you would pay for any other computer.

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
B: A Mac is way too expensive to have, because for every little program you have to pay

That's not entirely true. Yes there is quite a bit of shareware and commercial software, but also a LOT of freeware if you know where to look. Lots of BSD software will compile directly on the Mac, and lots of open source Linux software has been ported. The only non-free software I have on my Mac are Photoshop, Acrobat Pro, iWork, Logic, Reason, Recycle and Parallels. I chose to use these commercial apps not because free alternatives were not available (GIMP, OpenOffice, Garageband, Audacity...) but because these are the best options IMO. That certainly doesn't mean that there are no cheaper or free alternatives. I have a lot of free software on my Mac.

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
C: Linux may be a pain in the arse from time to time, but if you use well supported hardware it won't be much of a fuss.

Yes Linux is becoming a much more viable option. If the software I use regularly (Reason and Recycle mainly) were available for Linux I may not have migrated to the Mac. But I'm glad I did :-)

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
Don't get me wrong, I like Apple's efforts to make a decent OS. Though I really can't pay it. :-(

Use and abuse your student discount ;-)

--
moto

I have a currently working laptop and really can't pay something like 375 pounds... But, I'm almost finished with my study, so, maybe then, some macbook air will be nice :-D
But atm, even an EEE pc is way too expensive :lol:

[Speelgoedmannetje]

It's not about XP, which works fine, it's about Visual Studio, which did work fine until version 2005, and did NOT work fine with the 'enhancements' in the 2008 version.