Win2000 got so slow I could not use it.

[jw]

What would cause Win2000 to get so slow I could not use it anymore.
It was taking 5 to 10 minutes to load, and hung most on some
"networking" statement when loading (I have no network).

Once loaded (finally), clicking on any icon for a program, or opening
any folder took forever. For example, Firefox took 3 to 5 minutes to
open. Clicking on any folder, such as "photos" took several minutes
to open and clicking on one of those photos took at least a minute to
load the photo.

I should mention that I also have Win98se on this same computer (dual
boot). Win98 worked fine the whole time. I checked the partition
(ran scandisk while booted to win98). I defragged, to no avail. I
did find a stupid toolbar installed in Firefox that I did not
authorize, so I removed it (using Hijack This). That did not help, so
I completely removed Firefox. Still nothing.

I finally got so tired of fighting with it, that I completely deleted
the WINNT folder, DOCUMENTS and SETTINGS folder, and the PROGRAM FILES
folder. I also deleted the PAGEFILE. Then I restored all these
folders from a recent backup. (Of course I was booted to Win98 when I
did this).

Everything is working fine again since the restore. I'll have to
reinstall a few programs that I had installed since that backup, and I
lost a few bookmarks, but thats no biggie.

What might have caused this?

Thanks

 

[jw]

What would cause Win2000 to get so slow I could not use it anymore.
It was taking 5 to 10 minutes to load, and hung most on some
"networking" statement when loading (I have no network).

Once loaded (finally), clicking on any icon for a program, or opening
any folder took forever. For example, Firefox took 3 to 5 minutes to
open. Clicking on any folder, such as "photos" took several minutes
to open and clicking on one of those photos took at least a minute to
load the photo.

I should mention that I also have Win98se on this same computer (dual
boot). Win98 worked fine the whole time. I checked the partition
(ran scandisk while booted to win98). I defragged, to no avail. I
did find a stupid toolbar installed in Firefox that I did not
authorize, so I removed it (using Hijack This). That did not help, so
I completely removed Firefox. Still nothing.

I finally got so tired of fighting with it, that I completely deleted
the WINNT folder, DOCUMENTS and SETTINGS folder, and the PROGRAM FILES
folder. I also deleted the PAGEFILE. Then I restored all these
folders from a recent backup. (Of course I was booted to Win98 when I
did this).

Everything is working fine again since the restore. I'll have to
reinstall a few programs that I had installed since that backup, and I
lost a few bookmarks, but thats no biggie.

What might have caused this?

Thanks

I got an update on this. As I said, I restored my backup and it was
fixed. Then I installed the latest HOSTS file and everything went
into slow mode again. Same thing I did when the original install
slowed down. How in the heck can a HOSTS file slow down the whole
system???? I never installed a HOSTS file in 2000 because until
recently I always booted to Win98 to go online. The 2000 install just
had that "sample" Hosts file that comes with it. The latest one
online is around 630K. The original (default one) was under 1K.

Thanks

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

I got an update on this. As I said, I restored my backup and it was
fixed. Then I installed the latest HOSTS file and everything went
into slow mode again. Same thing I did when the original install
slowed down. How in the heck can a HOSTS file slow down the whole
system???? I never installed a HOSTS file in 2000 because until
recently I always booted to Win98 to go online. The 2000 install just
had that "sample" Hosts file that comes with it. The latest one
online is around 630K. The original (default one) was under 1K.

What is in the hosts file? Did you run something like SpyBot? It can
fill the host file with various nasty sites and set them to redirect to
localhost to prevent infections. Other security software may do the
same.

Otherwise, it's possible there is an infection someplace?

 

[jw]

What is in the hosts file? Did you run something like SpyBot? It can
fill the host file with various nasty sites and set them to redirect to
localhost to prevent infections. Other security software may do the
same.

Otherwise, it's possible there is an infection someplace?

I just downloaded this HOSTS file from a site that puts them out
regularly. (I dont recall the URL). So it's a fresh file, no chance
of being infested from use. Since that did not work, I grabbed the
HOSTS file that I have been using in my Windows98 partition (dual
boot). I had the same problem, yet that file works fine in Win98se.
That file is a month old, with a few additions that I add to block
facebook and twitter. So it's not the hosts file itself. I'll have
to run Spybot when I am using Win2000 again. I'm using Win98 right
now. I did run Hijack This and there was nothing unusual.

 

[none]

As I understand, XP and W2K both have a bug releated to a LARGE HOSTS file
and DNS service. You can Google to find specific information on this. I've
run with DNS service disabled for years to circumvent the slowdown you
describe. Works fine in both OS's.

 

[NimbUs]

(e-mail address removed) wrote

I just downloaded this HOSTS file from a site that puts them out
regularly.

Hi! That's a well known problem with _big_ hosts files causing system
slow down in Windows 2000 (possibly also XP and above). The solution is
to stop/disable DNS caching (service). Alternatively don't use the
large Hosts file!

HTH