OT - computer speed

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R

Richard Brookman

Guest
Rule of Tim - somebody here will know.

My laptop has been getting steadily slower over the last 6 months. Now it's
got beyond a joke - programs take ages to load, changing programs or windows
gives you 30 seconds of black white screen or empty windows until it decides
to play ball. I know that more memory etc would improve it, but a) the
factory memory is the max it can be without ripping whole thing apart, and
b) it was OK with its current memory until recently. I haven't installed
anything (that I'm aware of) or use different programs compared to before.

Dell Inspiron 2650 (2002), 256MB RAM, Pentium 4 1.6GHz running XP Home with
SP2
Norton AV (I know this slows things down, but why so much slower now with no
other changes?)

Weekly NAV updates and virus scans - always clear
Regular scans with Adaware and Spybot S&D, always find a few and remove, no
better
Regular defrags and disk scans
Tried system mechanic for a couple of months, but no better so I uninstalled
it

My work PC has no regular maintenance (as above) and is as quick as it was a
year ago.

Any ideas, chaps? I can't afford a new one at the moment!

--
Rich
==============================

Take out the obvious to email me.


 
On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:19:19 +0100, Richard Brookman
<[email protected]> wrote:

> Rule of Tim - somebody here will know.
>
> My laptop has been getting steadily slower over the last 6 months. ...

Backup the data and reinstall from scratch?

--
William Tasso

Land Rover - 110 V8
Discovery - V8
 
Richard Brookman wrote:

> Rule of Tim - somebody here will know.
>
> My laptop has been getting steadily slower over the last 6 months. Now it's
> got beyond a joke - programs take ages to load, changing programs or windows
> gives you 30 seconds of black white screen or empty windows until it decides
> to play ball. I know that more memory etc would improve it, but a) the
> factory memory is the max it can be without ripping whole thing apart, and
> b) it was OK with its current memory until recently. I haven't installed
> anything (that I'm aware of) or use different programs compared to before.
>
> Dell Inspiron 2650 (2002), 256MB RAM, Pentium 4 1.6GHz running XP Home with
> SP2
> Norton AV (I know this slows things down, but why so much slower now with no
> other changes?)
>
> Weekly NAV updates and virus scans - always clear
> Regular scans with Adaware and Spybot S&D, always find a few and remove, no
> better
> Regular defrags and disk scans
> Tried system mechanic for a couple of months, but no better so I uninstalled
> it
>
> My work PC has no regular maintenance (as above) and is as quick as it was a
> year ago.
>
> Any ideas, chaps? I can't afford a new one at the moment!

Running out of space on the 'C' drive? - Emptied re-cycle bin?
Disposed of unwanted temporary files? Disposed of unwanted IE cache files?

The fact that it has crept up on you suggests something along those
lines. Add to that the backup files left behind by the multitude of
recent Windows updates.

Only one partition? If so the above will limit the ability of the swap
file to cope. If you have another partition with space it might be an
idea to relocate the swap file there.
 

> Running out of space on the 'C' drive? - Emptied re-cycle bin?
> Disposed of unwanted temporary files? Disposed of unwanted IE cache files?
>
> The fact that it has crept up on you suggests something along those
> lines. Add to that the backup files left behind by the multitude of
> recent Windows updates.
>
Hi,

I'd definitely look at unwanted files. I had a problem with a users's
PC running Windows 98, tha had suddenly slowed to a crawl. Turned out
that she had a corruption in the Internet Explorer Cache. This meant
it was not reducing in size, and there were thousands of files in
there. She thought she had a virus as it went so slow. Deleting the
files alone took over 25 minutes!! After that, like a new PC.

So check the WINDOWS\TEMP, \TEMP, and %TEMP% directories and clear
them. Clear the IE cache. Empty recycle bin. Then defrag.

Check your event viewer - make sure there are no disk errors - had a
laptop user with similar symptoms and turned out to be a failing hard
disk - not uncommon on laptops in my opinion.

Last thing - 256MB is the minimum requirement for XP SP2. If your PC
has automatic updates turned on, there are about 50 patches for XP. I
have no definite evidence, but I'm sure that these slow XP down.

P.S. Just checked the %temp% (shorthand for C:\Documents and
Settings\username\Local Settings\Temp) directory on my Windows 2000
machine, found 3716 files in 101Mb! Typical IT consultants - we know
what to do but we don't do it on our own machines!

Good Luck
Graham Carter
Carter Computer Services (Pvt) Ltd
P.O. Box A1619
Avondale
Harare
Zimbabwe
Tel: +263 4 300082
Cell: +263 91 329310
Fax: +263 918 329310
email:[email protected]

 
"Richard Brookman" <[email protected]> wrote in
message news:[email protected]...
> Rule of Tim - somebody here will know.
>
> My laptop has been getting steadily slower over the last 6 months. Now
> it's got beyond a joke - programs take ages to load, changing programs or
> windows gives you 30 seconds of black white screen or empty windows until
> it decides to play ball. I know that more memory etc would improve it,
> but a) the factory memory is the max it can be without ripping whole thing
> apart, and b) it was OK with its current memory until recently. I haven't
> installed anything (that I'm aware of) or use different programs compared
> to before.
>
> Dell Inspiron 2650 (2002), 256MB RAM, Pentium 4 1.6GHz running XP Home
> with SP2
> Norton AV (I know this slows things down, but why so much slower now with
> no other changes?)
>
> Weekly NAV updates and virus scans - always clear
> Regular scans with Adaware and Spybot S&D, always find a few and remove,
> no better
> Regular defrags and disk scans
> Tried system mechanic for a couple of months, but no better so I
> uninstalled it
>
> My work PC has no regular maintenance (as above) and is as quick as it was
> a year ago.
>
> Any ideas, chaps? I can't afford a new one at the moment!
>
> --
> Rich

A bit suspicious that ad-aware always finds something, & removes it, yet it
keeps betting more.
Do you have any pop-ups appearing unbidden?
I'd suggest a scan with Spy Sweeper just in case- you never know. I find the
others seldom remove everything, so the spyware programs keep reinstalling
themselves.

If that's OK, I'd go with the other suggestions re. swapfile, cache etc.
How much empty space do you have on your drive?


 
>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Brookman <[email protected]> writes:

Richard> Rule of Tim - somebody here will know.
Richard> My laptop has been getting steadily slower over the last
Richard> 6 months.

In addition to the other tips, clean out the Cache in Internet
Explorer or whatever you're using for browsing the intraweb-thing.

After that, take a look at what's using the most memory on the
processes tab of the Task Manager, and see if it's something that
shouldn't be there (report back here or google for the name).

Andy


--
Andy Cunningham -- www.cunningham.me.uk
I told $VERY_BIG_CLIENT that sure, we can do $THING_THAT_VIOLATES_CAUSALITY
by Tuesday. You can do that, right?
-- Things that a sysadmin dreads hearing, #235
 
William Tasso wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:19:19 +0100, Richard Brookman
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Rule of Tim - somebody here will know.
>>
>> My laptop has been getting steadily slower over the last 6 months. ...
>
> Backup the data and reinstall from scratch?
>
> --William Tasso
>
> Land Rover - 110 V8
> Discovery - V8
As usual, I agree with William on that. Most Windoze systems still benefit from
a regular clean install on a regular basis.

--
Karen

And thanks to Tam at aus.bicycle for the cool new nick :)

"Sometimes I think I have a Guardian Idiot - a little invisible spirit just
behind my shoulder, looking out for me ... only he's an imbecile" - Jake Stonebender
 
On or around Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:33:01 +0100, Dougal
<DougalAThiskennel.free-online.co.uk> enlightened us thusly:

>Richard Brookman wrote:
>
>Running out of space on the 'C' drive? - Emptied re-cycle bin?
>Disposed of unwanted temporary files? Disposed of unwanted IE cache files?
>
>The fact that it has crept up on you suggests something along those
>lines. Add to that the backup files left behind by the multitude of
>recent Windows updates.
>
>Only one partition? If so the above will limit the ability of the swap
>file to cope. If you have another partition with space it might be an
>idea to relocate the swap file there.

that and defrag it, whether or not it says it needs it.
--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
"For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then
something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination -
we learned to talk." Pink Floyd (1994)
 
On 21/08/2006 20:19, Richard Brookman wrote:
> Rule of Tim - somebody here will know.
>
> My laptop has been getting steadily slower over the last 6 months. Now it's
> got beyond a joke - programs take ages to load, changing programs or windows
> gives you 30 seconds of black white screen or empty windows until it decides
> to play ball. I know that more memory etc would improve it, but a) the
> factory memory is the max it can be without ripping whole thing apart, and
> b) it was OK with its current memory until recently. I haven't installed
> anything (that I'm aware of) or use different programs compared to before.
>
> Dell Inspiron 2650 (2002), 256MB RAM, Pentium 4 1.6GHz running XP Home with
> SP2
> Norton AV (I know this slows things down, but why so much slower now with no
> other changes?)
>
> Weekly NAV updates and virus scans - always clear
> Regular scans with Adaware and Spybot S&D, always find a few and remove, no
> better
> Regular defrags and disk scans
> Tried system mechanic for a couple of months, but no better so I uninstalled
> it
>
> My work PC has no regular maintenance (as above) and is as quick as it was a
> year ago.
>
> Any ideas, chaps? I can't afford a new one at the moment!
>

If a re-install is to much hassle, or that you cant be arsed, just make
a new profile with a different name. use that to logon with from now on,
and just copy the files you want from c:\documents and
settings\olduser\desktop, my docs ets to the new user.

Its not a proper fix, but it works for a while - until it gets shagged
again.... :) And you dont have to re-install all your programs.

--
Mark
90 90 200tdi - Fixed :)
87 RR V8 EFI - Sorn'd

http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ - Firefox Rules!
http://fireftp.mozdev.org/ - FTP Plugin for Firefox
 

Had the same problem with otjher halfs Dads PC last week, nothing I (or
local PC boffin nwxt door) could shift it so he ended up starting from
scratch, everything was back to as new after hae had done that, except
for tha facr that he forgot to keep a copy pf all the pictures on it.
Oooooooooops!

Dave

 
As has been commented, installing service packs can have a significant
effect. I took a clean 2K machine, with just doze loaded it was using about
about 50Mb. Downloaded all the service packs and updates and that shifted to
nearer the 120Mb level, and this was before installing software.

I ahve also found some apps, particularly my sony DV cams app sitting idly
while chewing up about 90Mb. Have a good look at your task manager and see
what is using what. Then after performing all the tips already suggested,
carefully go into msconfig and start removing apps, from the startup list.

This should free up quite a bit of space.

I also find regclean.exe (from MS website) helps things a little.

Regards
Stephen


"Dave R" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> Had the same problem with otjher halfs Dads PC last week, nothing I (or
> local PC boffin nwxt door) could shift it so he ended up starting from
> scratch, everything was back to as new after hae had done that, except
> for tha facr that he forgot to keep a copy pf all the pictures on it.
> Oooooooooops!
>
> Dave
>


 
On 2006-08-22 15:40:48 +0100, "fanie" <[email protected]> said:

> As has been commented, installing service packs can have a significant
> effect. I took a clean 2K machine, with just doze loaded it was using
> about about 50Mb. Downloaded all the service packs and updates and that
> shifted to nearer the 120Mb level, and this was before installing
> software.

In addition to all that has been mentioned, 256MB RAM is nowhere near
enough for an average XP SP2 machine these days. You really should
have a minimum of 512MB. With the extra loads that XP SP2's firewall
adds as well as the numerous service pack's and security centre, the
more memory you can install the better and it is currently one of the
cheapest upgrades you can perform. Ideally 1Gb would give your laptop
a new lease of life.


--
Darren Griffin
PocketGPSWorld - www.PocketGPSWorld.com
The Premier GPS Resource for News, Reviews and Forums

 
On or around Tue, 22 Aug 2006 16:40:48 +0200, "fanie"
<[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:

>As has been commented, installing service packs can have a significant
>effect. I took a clean 2K machine, with just doze loaded it was using about
>about 50Mb. Downloaded all the service packs and updates and that shifted to
>nearer the 120Mb level, and this was before installing software.

don't try installing X3 - Reunion, then it wants about 4.3GB of disk space.

I see I have 19.09 GB of software on this machine...

btw, for looking at yer hard drives to spot any monster files eating space I
can recommend a nifty thing called "Scanner" from a chap called Steffen
Gerlach:

http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/

very handy little gadget.
--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
"The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn, The swallow twittering
from the strawbuilt shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing
horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed."
Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
 
William Tasso wrote:

|| On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:19:19 +0100, Richard Brookman
|| <[email protected]> wrote:
||
||| Rule of Tim - somebody here will know.
|||
||| My laptop has been getting steadily slower over the last 6 months.
||| ...
||
|| Backup the data and reinstall from scratch?
||
|| --
|| William Tasso
||
|| Land Rover - 110 V8
|| Discovery - V8

That's the Final Solution - worked on my daughter's, when she had been
spending too much time on kazaa and had a ton of malware. However, I'd
quite like to know why a computer could slow down over the months with no
(obvious) reason why, and fix that rather than reformat and re-install. As
I said in my post, my work PC is incredibly fast by comparison and gets no
regular maintenance at all. That hasn't deteriorated in a year of my daily
use.

I'll keep your suggestion in my Last Resort file :)

--
Rich
==============================

Take out the obvious to email me.


 
On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 18:34:04 +0100, Richard Brookman
<[email protected]> wrote:

> William Tasso wrote:
>
> || On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:19:19 +0100, Richard Brookman
> || <[email protected]> wrote:
> ||
> ||| Rule of Tim - somebody here will know.
> |||
> ||| My laptop has been getting steadily slower over the last 6 months.
> ||| ...
> ||
> || Backup the data and reinstall from scratch?
>
> That's the Final Solution - worked on my daughter's, when she had been
> spending too much time on kazaa and had a ton of malware.

That would do it ;)

> However, I'd
> quite like to know why a computer could slow down over the months with no
> (obvious) reason why, and fix that rather than reformat and re-install.

How long have you got? been plenty good suggestions in this thread -
could take another six months to work out which apply and elimate the
others.

> As
> I said in my post, my work PC is incredibly fast by comparison and gets
> no
> regular maintenance at all. That hasn't deteriorated in a year of my
> daily
> use.
>
> I'll keep your suggestion in my Last Resort file :)

Thought: The easy way is to buy a new HD unit, install onto that and then
load the old HD as a slave [1] - gives instant access to your old data
files and you get a HD upgrade to boot (pardon the pun).

[1] possibly marking the entire she-bang as read-only - MMV
--
William Tasso

Land Rover - 110 V8
Discovery - V8
 
Dougal wrote:

||| Any ideas, chaps? I can't afford a new one at the moment!
||
|| Running out of space on the 'C' drive?

Over 12GB free space.

|| - Emptied re-cycle bin?
|| Disposed of unwanted temporary files? Disposed of unwanted IE cache
|| files?

Done weekly.

||
|| The fact that it has crept up on you suggests something along those
|| lines. Add to that the backup files left behind by the multitude of
|| recent Windows updates.

Didn't know they did that. Thay may be a possibility, as it seems to update
itself every couple of weeks. Something else that was mentioned was Norton
updates. These accumulate as you download them and eventually every process
you ask it to do has to wade through tons of AV checks before it can be
executed. I'm not very techy, though, so this may be eyewash.

|| Only one partition? If so the above will limit the ability of the
|| swap file to cope. If you have another partition with space it might
|| be an idea to relocate the swap file there.

Only one partition. The HD is 30GB with about 17GB of data - would I be
better off creating a second partition of (say) 5GB and leaving that for the
swap files?

Thanks for the response.

--
Rich
==============================

Take out the obvious to email me.


 
Graham Carter wrote:

|| I'd definitely look at unwanted files. I had a problem with a
|| users's PC running Windows 98, tha had suddenly slowed to a crawl.
|| Turned out that she had a corruption in the Internet Explorer Cache.
|| This meant it was not reducing in size, and there were thousands of
|| files in there. She thought she had a virus as it went so slow.
|| Deleting the files alone took over 25 minutes!! After that, like a
|| new PC.
||
|| So check the WINDOWS\TEMP, \TEMP, and %TEMP% directories and clear
|| them. Clear the IE cache. Empty recycle bin. Then defrag.

Only about 200KB of files in there - I clear it regularly.

||
|| Check your event viewer - make sure there are no disk errors - had a
|| laptop user with similar symptoms and turned out to be a failing hard
|| disk - not uncommon on laptops in my opinion.

What would I look for? The list of events in event viewer doesn't seem to
bear much relation to what has happened when I take a look - it doesn't even
record when the machine is switched on and off. I'm missing something,
obviously.

|| Last thing - 256MB is the minimum requirement for XP SP2. If your PC
|| has automatic updates turned on, there are about 50 patches for XP.
|| I have no definite evidence, but I'm sure that these slow XP down.

Aha - I think I have all the patches for SP2 installed, so that would
account for the slowing down gradually. Is there a way to restore speed
without reinstalling XP and not letting it update? I assume the patches are
necessary for security, which is why I always let it update when it asks to.

|| Good Luck

Thanks!

--
Rich
==============================

Take out the obvious to email me.


 
On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 19:03:36 +0100, Richard Brookman
<[email protected]> wrote:

> ...
> would I be
> better off creating a second partition of (say) 5GB and leaving that for
> the
> swap files?

Not really - best solution is to give the swap process a dedicated spindle
(HD unit) to play with.

better still - install a RAM upgrade so that swapping is less frequent.

bestest - both the above :)
--
William Tasso - o/s agnostic

Land Rover - 110 V8
Discovery - V8
 
Quickest way to defrag a disc is copy all of the data off it and reformat,
wouldn't recommend that for the C drive though, unless you copy it with
something like Norton Ghost.


--
Larry
Series 3 rust and holes

"Austin Shackles" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On or around Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:33:01 +0100, Dougal
> <DougalAThiskennel.free-online.co.uk> enlightened us thusly:
>
>
> that and defrag it, whether or not it says it needs it.
> --
> Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
> "For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then
> something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination -
> we learned to talk." Pink Floyd (1994)


 
Natalie Drest wrote:

|| "Richard Brookman" <[email protected]> wrote
|| in message news:[email protected]...
||| Rule of Tim - somebody here will know.
|||
||| My laptop has been getting steadily slower over the last 6 months.
||| Now it's got beyond a joke - programs take ages to load, changing
||| programs or windows gives you 30 seconds of black white screen or
||| empty windows until it decides to play ball. I know that more
||| memory etc would improve it, but a) the factory memory is the max
||| it can be without ripping whole thing apart, and b) it was OK with
||| its current memory until recently. I haven't installed anything
||| (that I'm aware of) or use different programs compared to before.
|||
||| Dell Inspiron 2650 (2002), 256MB RAM, Pentium 4 1.6GHz running XP
||| Home with SP2
||| Norton AV (I know this slows things down, but why so much slower
||| now with no other changes?)
|||
||| Weekly NAV updates and virus scans - always clear
||| Regular scans with Adaware and Spybot S&D, always find a few and
||| remove, no better
||| Regular defrags and disk scans
||| Tried system mechanic for a couple of months, but no better so I
||| uninstalled it
|||
||| My work PC has no regular maintenance (as above) and is as quick as
||| it was a year ago.
|||
||| Any ideas, chaps? I can't afford a new one at the moment!
|||
||| --
||| Rich
||
|| A bit suspicious that ad-aware always finds something, & removes it,
|| yet it keeps betting more.

I'm not too concerned - it's nearly always the same thing, and Adaware rates
the risk as low.

|| Do you have any pop-ups appearing unbidden?

No.

|| I'd suggest a scan with Spy Sweeper just in case- you never know. I
|| find the others seldom remove everything, so the spyware programs
|| keep reinstalling themselves.

I'll try that, thanks.

|| If that's OK, I'd go with the other suggestions re. swapfile, cache
|| etc. How much empty space do you have on your drive?

Loads - >12GB.

Thanks Natalie.

--
Rich
==============================

Take out the obvious to email me.


 
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