Are you running antivirus software with up to date virus defintions? Have you checked for and removed all spyware/malware that may have accumulated on your computer? What programs are running in the background when the problem occurs? Are there any processes that are running that seem to be taking up substantial amounts of CPU time? (To answer the latter 2 questions, open the Task Manager by pressing the Cntrl-Alt-Delete key combination, look on the Applications tab and the Processes tab).
A few suggestions from personal experience (if you haven't done these already):
1) Defrag your hard drive, and do this at least once every couple of months, or after installing/uninstalling a bunch of large applications/files. If you've never done this it's quite possible this is your problem
2) Get a registry cleaner and run it. I do this weekly using RegScrubXP - it's free. A junky registry can significantly slow down your system.
3) Try other antispyware/antivirus software. Different programs find different things. You'd be surprised at the differences. Spybot Search and Destroy is very popular, free, and seems to work pretty well. You should also try Microsoft Antispyware Beta (this works surprisingly well). I personally use Norton Internet Security 2005 and Microsoft Antispyware. They compliment each other pretty well I think.
While I agree that (1) might help speed things up and (3) is a good idea. I would strongly recommend against (2). Registry cleaners often cause many many more problems than they solve and I would wholeheartedly disagree that a junky registry will significantly slow things down.
That's very interesting (seriously, I'm not being sarcastic). Could you give any examples of issues you've had with registry cleaners? I've never had a problem personally - only improvement. Also, I recommended one to a friend and the end result was absolutely amazing. He had over 1200 invalid entries, and afterward just his boot time was cut from over 5 minutes to just under 2. I can see the fear in using one that doesn't do what it should (which is even more likely in free registry cleaners); deleting a critical key could be disastrous. But if it works properly, what's the problem?
Again I must reiterate that I mean no hostility (in case it sounds that way), nor do I think I know something you don't. I really want your input. Most of what I know is self taught over the past couple of years - believe it or not mostly from 4 months of troubleshooting my original 4600 that Dell ended up replacing with my current machine (pretty good deal huh?). I learned all sorts of things about hardware, software, and the fact that at least 60% of Dell technicians can't speak English and seem to know no more than I do. :smileymad:
Of course if you do a search on Registry Cleaners, you will find thousands more articles explaining why they are essential and how they can speed things up, but there is little data to back up these claims. My personal experience from several years ago when I actually used these tools and believed the hype, was that I never experienced any performance gain and often had to restore back ups of the registry after some cleaner messed things up.
Of course if the registry is filled with entries from spyware and malware, then this can cause significant effects on system performance. But, registry cleaners are not designed to remove this kind of garbage from the registry and the function is better left to spyware/malware removal tools which are designed to remove this type of garbage.
Thanks for the link volcano11. I'm convinced. Also, one detail I didn't mention before about my friend's computer - it ran on Windows 98. That's probably why it worked so well. Heh...you learn something new everyday.
volcano11
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June 28th, 2005 19:00
rodneysaunders
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June 28th, 2005 20:00
Hi Steve
Continuously running Trend Micro Internet Security with automatic updates, and Spy Sweeper to detect/remove spyware/malware.
Task manager does not show any background applications that are grabbing all the CPU capacity.
Regards
Rodney
rollainm
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June 29th, 2005 01:00
Message Edited by rollainm on 06-28-2005 09:22 PM
volcano11
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June 29th, 2005 01:00
While I agree that (1) might help speed things up and (3) is a good idea. I would strongly recommend against (2). Registry cleaners often cause many many more problems than they solve and I would wholeheartedly disagree that a junky registry will significantly slow things down.
Steve
rollainm
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June 29th, 2005 02:00
volcano11
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June 29th, 2005 04:00
My experience comes from reading messages on these forums for over 5 years. It is summed up exactly by the following article and user comments:
http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000643.html
Of course if you do a search on Registry Cleaners, you will find thousands more articles explaining why they are essential and how they can speed things up, but there is little data to back up these claims. My personal experience from several years ago when I actually used these tools and believed the hype, was that I never experienced any performance gain and often had to restore back ups of the registry after some cleaner messed things up.
Of course if the registry is filled with entries from spyware and malware, then this can cause significant effects on system performance. But, registry cleaners are not designed to remove this kind of garbage from the registry and the function is better left to spyware/malware removal tools which are designed to remove this type of garbage.
Steve
100mph
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June 29th, 2005 06:00
rollainm
330 Posts
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June 30th, 2005 19:00