ashfox Posted February 16, 2006 Share Posted February 16, 2006 My computer isn't a super high speed pc but it is a 3.0GHz and it has always been fast. But recently everything started to slow down. I thought that it might be a virus and/or spyware so i have run some scans but they didnt find anything. These are the symptoms that my pc has: 1)In the past couple of days it has really slowed down!! 2)Sometimes when i click on a program nothing happens and it doesnt load up. 3)Programs stop responding for no reason and i have to ctrl,alt & del to get rid of them. 4)Recenlty my pc takes ages to shut down and sometimes it just freezes and i have to turn it off manually. I have XP home edition as a operating system. I dont know what could be causing this. it could be a virus that my anti virus software cant pick up but i have mcafee and that has always had a good reputation for detecting viruses. Another strange thing that happened the other day was when i ran a scan for viruses and spyware. I started the scans and went to have some lunch. when i came back my computer had shutdown on its own. it has never done that before and i definately didnt go anywhere near the shutdown button so i didnt do it! If anybody has any ideas on what could be causing this and how to fix it please let me know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mateya Posted February 16, 2006 Share Posted February 16, 2006 Did you install any new software just before this startred to happen? I would run some windows registry cleaning first. You can also try to repair windows (and keep all setings intact). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quosego Posted February 16, 2006 Share Posted February 16, 2006 Well, fact is that windows will eventually after a few months die. You just installed to many programs, deleted them, changed the registry etc etc. There really is only one solution to that, and that's a total reinstall. So unless you recently reinstalled your comp you could consider reinstalling it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ashfox Posted February 16, 2006 Author Share Posted February 16, 2006 Did you install any new software just before this startred to happen? I would run some windows registry cleaning first. You can also try to repair windows (and keep all setings intact). The only new software that i can think of that i installed recently was a new game called 'X3 The Reunion'. The game itself is graphically demanding and it uses a lot of processing power to run but i cant think of anyway how this could affect the main running of my pc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiznik Posted February 16, 2006 Share Posted February 16, 2006 If your computer were my computer this is what I would do: 1.) Open up MSConfig and disable all the startup items and non-Microsoft services (Start > Run > MSCONFIG > Click okay > Click the Startup tab > Click disable all > Click the Services tab > Click Hide All Microsoft Services > Click Disable All > Click Apply > Click Close > Click Restart Now) This will tell you if any of the programs running on your computer are slowing it down. 2.) Then I'd check to make sure I had at least 15% of the hard drive space free, and then I'd defrag the hard drive. (Right click my computer > Manage > Defrag) 3.) If that didn't fix it I'd clear my internet cache and make sure that it isn't set to more than 100 mb. 4.) If that still didn't fix it then I would run some scans (like you already did), and then after that I'd format the hard drive and reinstall windows. I wouldn't recommend trying to repair windows, because that won't change the registry, and that's probably what is damaged. Back up your data on to a DVD or CD or whatever, and then boot to your windows CD. Put the CD in the drive, reboot, make sure you press space bar a bunch when you see "Press Any Key to Boot From CD". Then When you can pick the Partition, pick the one that has C:\ in front of it. Use that partition. It will tell you that windows already is installed on this drive, just continue anyway. Then when you get to select the file system, select "FORMAT USING NTFS FILE SYSTEM". Don't select the "Quick" option. 5.) If your computer does not run perfectly fine after that, then you have a hardware failure. Let me know if you need any more help. -Kiznik Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ashfox Posted February 16, 2006 Author Share Posted February 16, 2006 I've read through all of your suggestions and im going to defragment my harddrives tonight. I dont want to start from the beginning and reformat my drives and reinstall Windows unless it is absolutely neccesary. I have removed most of the startup items so the pc should be a bit quicker. I downloaded a program that cleans and detects errors in the system registry and i scanned my computer. It detected over 1500 errors!! Ive corrected the errors and my pc seems a bit faster now. Hopefully once i have defragmented the drives it will be even better. Thanks for all your help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiznik Posted February 16, 2006 Share Posted February 16, 2006 Yeah, it is a pain when you have to format and reinstall. Hopefully it doesn't come to that for you. But let us know if you have any other questions about this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S0V13T Posted February 16, 2006 Share Posted February 16, 2006 Formatting and reinstalling your OS isn't really that big of a deal, if you keep back ups. Thats the whole reason I always have 2 or more hard drives in my system at any given time. One has windows, and installed stuff, and the other has all my mp3's and program install files (like winrar, daemon tools, nero, and mobo / gfx drivers, my resume, all the projects I'm workin on, game save files, etc). Regularly making back ups is your personal insurance policy for when your operating system rebels against you. Formatting and reinstalling is a once every 6 months like clockwork ritual for me.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest c4evap Posted February 16, 2006 Share Posted February 16, 2006 Maybe that game you installed is loading stuff at Windows startup? c4 B) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ashfox Posted February 16, 2006 Author Share Posted February 16, 2006 Maybe that game you installed is loading stuff at Windows startup? c4 B) No, i checked and theres no evidence that anything that is related to that game starts when windows starts. i checked to make sure. Just incase my pc decides to break down ive backed everything up onto a 300 gb external drive so its not that much of a problem if i do have to reformat everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest c4evap Posted February 16, 2006 Share Posted February 16, 2006 Maybe that game you installed is loading stuff at Windows startup? c4 B) No, i checked and theres no evidence that anything that is related to that game starts when windows starts. i checked to make sure. Just incase my pc decides to break down ive backed everything up onto a 300 gb external drive so its not that much of a problem if i do have to reformat everything. Not all running processes show up in Windows Task Manager. Try using Process Explorer. It's a free utility from Sysinternals. Here's a link to the webpage. The download button is located at the bottom of the page. A great program to see what's really running on your system. c4 B) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ashfox Posted February 16, 2006 Author Share Posted February 16, 2006 Not all running processes show up in Windows Task Manager. Try using Process Explorer. It's a free utility from Sysinternals. Here's a link to the webpage. The download button is located at the bottom of the page. A great program to see what's really running on your system. c4 B) Thanks for the info. I've downloaded the program and checked to see whats running. I still cant see anything related to the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wahaha Posted February 16, 2006 Share Posted February 16, 2006 Actually what is best to do it go back to MSCONFIG and click the STARTUP tab and take a screen cap of it. It will be easy for me to spot what programs should be running and which are spyware. You can also run ad aware SE, although most of the time it doesn't get everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ashfox Posted February 16, 2006 Author Share Posted February 16, 2006 Actually what is best to do it go back to MSCONFIG and click the STARTUP tab and take a screen cap of it. It will be easy for me to spot what programs should be running and which are spyware. You can also run ad aware SE' date=' although most of the time it doesn't get everything.[/quote'] I presume that ad aware SE is a anti spyware/adware program. I have already got a program similar to that called spy sweeper. I scanned my pc using that and it didnt detect anything. I think that the main problem why my pc is slowing down is because i have so many programs installed and it has been a while since i got this pc so as you can expect there will be quite a lot of stuff on it. I still dont know why my pc shut itself down earlier today. it happened twice! The second time it happened i was actually sitting infront of the screen reading a post from this website! It hasnt happened for a while and i did repair the windows registry (maybe an error in the registry could have caused my pc to shutdown on its own?) to be honest i dont have a clue! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StitchInTime Posted February 17, 2006 Share Posted February 17, 2006 That happens to me now and again, and I am left sitting in front of the screen in stunned silence, thinking, 'was it something I wrote?' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wahaha Posted February 17, 2006 Share Posted February 17, 2006 Still, you can try the best free adware detection program. Most of the time if your PC shuts down it's because something is loose in the case, a bad power supply, or it could be a virus. You should still post a screen cap of the msconfig startup screen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ashfox Posted February 17, 2006 Author Share Posted February 17, 2006 ok. here are the screen shots of my msconfig startup as attachments. I have so much stuff that there are three screen shots so that you can see them all. As you can see i have already disabled some things to try and make my pc run faster. i didnt want to disable any more because half of them i dont know what they are and i also know that some things are related to my anti virus and firewall systems. Also generally when i am on my computer and i go to 'task manager' and 'processes' i normally have on average about 40 to 50 things on there. Is this normal or could this be why my pc is a bit slow? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kyran Posted February 17, 2006 Share Posted February 17, 2006 darn hate writing stuff twice you guys got good ideas but no-one has mentioned the dreaded microsoftantispyware free from microsoft IT WORKS I use it all the time on customers computers try disckeeper for defragging it's boottime defrag is far superior to the windows one and the repair console works well too chkdsk /r for those that dun know look here for disckeeper ftp://pc-repair.no-ip.org Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wahaha Posted February 17, 2006 Share Posted February 17, 2006 There's nothing in there that is a virus or spyware, but what is slowing your PC down is the mcafee antivirus. Norton is bad for this too. Even on fast computers it can bring them to their knees. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ashfox Posted February 17, 2006 Author Share Posted February 17, 2006 I know that anti virus software is very taxing on the cpu. in the past i have deactivated mcafee when i want to do certain things. even then my pc was still slow! Thanks for everyones input into this problem. ive tried everyones suggestions short of completely reformating and installing windows. (I dont want to do that). I guess i will just have to live with the fact that my pc is getting slow! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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