Performance on laptop crawling, but task manager says everything's fine. Help...

[joseph.greer]

My Fiance's laptop is experiencing some very strange symptoms. I
don't know how to sum them up or even how to categorize it, but here's
my best shot:

* The computer when re-booted starts to hang just about when it
starts to make a connection to our wireless network.
* Everything takes about 30 seconds to do (click on start?... menu
shows up 30 seconds or more later)
* No signs of resource problems: The task manager shows CPU
utilization at about 6%. Memory usage also seems normal. Network
usage seems normal. Still... everything crawls.
* Wireless network connections: The connection to our wifi network
shows success.
* I try to open Firefox but it never launches
* I click on Start, it takes 22 seconds to load on screen.
* I click Control Panel, it takes 3 minutes to open the screen... a
searching flashlight is displayed as it cannot find the control panel
icons. This process lasts minutes. (I've been watching it now for 5
minutes with no change).
* Double-clicking on the wireless network connection icon in the
lower right hand corner opens the Wireless Netowrk Connection Status
window (about 22 seconds later). The screen is frozen. The duration
value is not incrementing. Buttons change color on mouse-over, but
then freeze. The duration value increases a bit. It's like the
program is getting a few miliseconds of cpu time every minute.

Later, if I get to the window showing all available wireless
connections, the computer shows I am actually not connected. Attempts
to reconnect start duplicate wireless connection icons on the bottom
of the screen. Last reboot I got 6 of them. Three showing failure,
two frozen mid-process of trying to get a new IP address allocated.
One showing connected.

The whole system is un-usable and I've got no idea what to do. The
slow system makes it extra difficult to troubleshoot.

Here are the specs of the system:

Sony VGN-SZ330P laptop
Windows XP OS with SP2
Virus Protection and Firewall by ZoneAlarm. All virus defs up-to-
date.

Any help appreciated.

 

[Gerry]

What appears in Event Viewer?

Please post copies of all Error and Warning Reports appearing in the
System and Application logs in Event Viewer for the last boot which
failed. No Information Reports or Duplicates please. Indicate which also
appear in a previous boot.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer. When researching the meaning
of the error, information regarding Event ID, Source and Description
are important.

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427/en-us

Part of the Description of the error will include a link, which you
should double click for further information. You can copy using copy
and paste. Often the link will, however, say there is no further
information.
http://go.microsoft.com/fw.link/events.asp
(Please note the hyperlink above is for illustration purposes only)

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Guest]

Hi, I have been having exactly the same issue on two desktops since last
week and it's been driving me crazy. I have scanned with Spybot Search and
Destroy, HiJack-This, Adaware and I have a ZoneAlarm ZA100G CheckPoint
Firewall.

I KNOW it's not a virus, malware, trojan. But guess what? As soon as I
shutdown Zone Alarm after reading your post everything seems to all of a
sudden be back to normal, I think it's the freakin Zone Alarm!!! Try it and
let me know!

 

[Guest]

I should say I have ZA Security Suite too but also have their branded
router/firewall ZA100G

 

[Gerry]

Check for Zone Alarm updates! From time to you see reports of bugs.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Guest]

Hi Gerry,

I have the latest update of the engine, antivirus and spyware. However, I
have been to the ZA forum and there are numerous complaints regarding this
problem and it seems to be specific to the ZA 7.0.xxx versions. I wasn't
having any issues until 7.0337 but there are many many complaints about slow
boot up, slow start up, disk thrashing, very slow program start up, freezing
etc. As soon as I shutdown ZA all is perfect again, as soon as I start it
all the same problem. Since Checkpoint took over and start farming out all
the coding everyone says ZA is horrible now and now I have experienced it
first hand.

For right now I am not running ZA but I still have my ZA100G and a host of
other protections so I feel safe for leaving it off until they fix their
software. The one thing is I usually "upgrade" instead of "clean installing"
ZA so maybe I need to do that. I love ZA but this is a real problem they
have to fix.

Thanks for your reply.