I formatted my computer earlier in the year and just reinstalled the stuff I needed (itunes/mozilla/avg/zonealarm etc) and no other useless crap I don't need, and in just a couple of months my computer is really laggy, and slow at doing the most basic of things, sometimes I have to wait up to 2 minutes for it to simply open my web-browser, or fifteen seconds to get the start menu. I've done virus scans, disk defrag and anything else I can think of that might get it running quicker but no luck.
I doubt anyone will be able to resolve my problem with this rather brief and vague description, but my problem is I don't know how to diagnose the issue let alone fix it. Can anyone help me out at all? I don't want to have to pay someone to look at my machine, and because of all my music I don't want to have to re-format and spend a week sorting my music out again.
Any help is mucho appreciated.
Slow, laggy, buggy computer.
Re: Slow, laggy, buggy computer.
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/index.php
Grab HiJackThis and create a log. I'm not sure if anyone here can help you with it, but a site like http://www.d-a-l.com might be a good place to start. They've got a couple people who regularly scan HJT logs.
Good luck though
Grab HiJackThis and create a log. I'm not sure if anyone here can help you with it, but a site like http://www.d-a-l.com might be a good place to start. They've got a couple people who regularly scan HJT logs.
Good luck though
Re: Slow, laggy, buggy computer.
Sounds like your hard drive might be on the way out.
Is it a laptop or a desktop? Does it run hot? How old is it? What spec is it?
BTW if you're running XP or vista, zonealarm is a waste of time. the built-in firewall is ideal and light-weight.
Is it a laptop or a desktop? Does it run hot? How old is it? What spec is it?
BTW if you're running XP or vista, zonealarm is a waste of time. the built-in firewall is ideal and light-weight.
Re: Slow, laggy, buggy computer.
It had occurred to me that it might be hardware failing, it's a good 5 years old now, running for about 3-6 hours a day (desktop comp). Board temp - 30. CPU temp - 37.5
Not too sharp on the technical side of things so here's a printscreen from sisoftware sandra.
Not too sharp on the technical side of things so here's a printscreen from sisoftware sandra.
Re: Slow, laggy, buggy computer.
Hmm it's pretty old but XP's been around longer, shouldn't be causing an issue in itself.
I'd recommend trying these things first:
1. Set the page file size to 2048-2048
2. Remove zonealarm and use the built-in XP firewall
3. Swap out as many programs as you can for the 'lite' alternatives (acrobat/foxit, msn/pidgin, outlook/gmail, office/openoffice, photoshop/irfanview)
4. Add/Remove absolutely everything you don't need
5. Download CCleaner and run a full cleanout, and use the reg fixer to remove as much crap as it can find
6. Turn off AVG's resident scanner or set it to only scan on file writes, not file reads
7. Run a full defrag after all this
8. Turn off hibernate function
9. Turn off windows updates completely (not even notify) and do them manually once a month by going to windowsupdate.microsoft.com using IE.
10. Set the power options in control panel to 'always on'
Some of the above won't be feasible for you, some you'll have to google, some people are going to disagree with. In the end I suspect it's your hardware slowing things down OR you have some malware onboard, but the above are all generally good tweaks to try. The pagefile sizing coupled with a defrag afterwards is always a good one. I didn't mention using windows classic but you could do - it won't be a big speed boost. I suspect a lot of the sluggishness of your machine is down to running a batch of modern clutter programs which all take a while to start up (adobe helper, MSN, AVG updater, windows update)
I'd recommend trying these things first:
1. Set the page file size to 2048-2048
2. Remove zonealarm and use the built-in XP firewall
3. Swap out as many programs as you can for the 'lite' alternatives (acrobat/foxit, msn/pidgin, outlook/gmail, office/openoffice, photoshop/irfanview)
4. Add/Remove absolutely everything you don't need
5. Download CCleaner and run a full cleanout, and use the reg fixer to remove as much crap as it can find
6. Turn off AVG's resident scanner or set it to only scan on file writes, not file reads
7. Run a full defrag after all this
8. Turn off hibernate function
9. Turn off windows updates completely (not even notify) and do them manually once a month by going to windowsupdate.microsoft.com using IE.
10. Set the power options in control panel to 'always on'
Some of the above won't be feasible for you, some you'll have to google, some people are going to disagree with. In the end I suspect it's your hardware slowing things down OR you have some malware onboard, but the above are all generally good tweaks to try. The pagefile sizing coupled with a defrag afterwards is always a good one. I didn't mention using windows classic but you could do - it won't be a big speed boost. I suspect a lot of the sluggishness of your machine is down to running a batch of modern clutter programs which all take a while to start up (adobe helper, MSN, AVG updater, windows update)
Re: Slow, laggy, buggy computer.
right, I know it's been a while since I posted but it's been a busy couple of weeks and I've not had more than 10 mins in front of my computer. Firstly, thank you guys for the responses. Foo, I did pretty much everything you said and there has been an undoubtably vast improvement in the performance in my machine. turning off avg auto scans, removing a lot of crap including zonealarm seems to have done the world of good, so thanks alot for your advice. I did just notice something though as you can see in the pic below:
an AMD Athlon xp 2500+ processor should be much quicker than 952mhz no?
an AMD Athlon xp 2500+ processor should be much quicker than 952mhz no?
Re: Slow, laggy, buggy computer.
It should run at about 1.8Ghz. Unless it's a mobility version you would find in a laptop, where the chip will clock up/down as required.
May be worth checking the BIOS to see if it's detecting the processor correctly. There might be an option to select the exact processor model then it'll set itself all correctly.
Be sure that's really your chip though, clocking a lower chip too high will fry it.
May be worth checking the BIOS to see if it's detecting the processor correctly. There might be an option to select the exact processor model then it'll set itself all correctly.
Be sure that's really your chip though, clocking a lower chip too high will fry it.
Re: Slow, laggy, buggy computer.
you could consider overclocking your PC, also, i know a program called RegCure, that repairs errors. Try that, i think it's about 10-15 quid, try this link: http://www.regcure.com/lp/revenuewire/5/
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Tormentius
- Posts: 4108
- Joined: Sat Dec 14, 2002 8:00 am
Re: Slow, laggy, buggy computer.
mcelf wrote:you could consider overclocking your PC,
If its unstable now, overclocking isn't going to help that any.