Windows XP high-end machine is terribly slow

[Guest]

I have a Windows XP Pro SP2-based machine that is God-awfully slow. Here are
the symptoms:

# Startup takes at least 4-5 mins after I type in my login username/password
# While starting up, nothing responds anywhere, including on the taskbar,
and the system clock shows up after ages
# Starting up applications takes forever - simple apps like IE or Firefox
take anywhere from 1-3 mins to start
# Starting very recently, the harddisk seems to be *frantically* running
almost all the time - grind, grind, grind - even when I'm not running any
applications (the CPU usage is just 1%)
# Right clicking on a file or folder in Explorer brings up the context menu
after 10-15 seconds instead of faster
# In Explorer, when trying to open a folder containing either a large number
of graphic files (such as .ico files) or several large MS Office documents
(each 5-50MB), the system seems to hang/freeze for several minutes
# While starting up (after logging in) the display intermittently blinks off
and on a couple of times (as if it lost power) before stabilizing

Here's my hardware configuration:
My machine is a Dell Latitude D610 running 1GB RAM using a Pentium M 1.86GHz
Processor. It's configured to use about 1.5GB of virtual memory and has about
17 GB free hard disk space. The machine has no attached USB or external
drives. I have a single partition (C of 60GB.

I've run through all the usual things to do:
- Run msconfig and turned off all but the most vital tasks
- I always keep McAfee, Windows Defender and the Windows Firewall turned on
and running with the latest virus definitions
- I've run through McAfee, Windows Defender, CCleaner, Adaware and none of
them showed up anything. I've run TrendMicro's, Panda's, Kaspersky's and
BitDefender's online virus scans and they didn't show up anything either
- My temporary internet files (both in IE 6.0 and Firefox) and Recycle Bin
are cleaned up, and running Disk Cleaner shows that I have very little "crap"
- I've configured my system settings for maximum performance (Control
Panel->System->Advanced->Performance->Settings-Adjust for best performance)
- I've used Process Explorer and Dependency Checker on explorer.exe, and it
does not load any non-Microsoft DLLs
- I've turned off the indexing system using the instructions in the
Microsoft support knowledge base
- I've configured the system to search for DLLs starting from the
Windows/system32 folder instead of the home folder (using the
SafeDllSearchMode) based on instructions in the Microsoft support knowledge
base
- I've not configured or mapped any network drives
- I have pretty fast network connectivity both at work (T1/LAN) and at home
(Cable) and I'm not accessing anything through a proxy
- My CPU usage during [supposedly] idle times is 1% (unless McAfee kicks in)
even though the harddisk seems to be working ALL the time
- I've uninstalled most applications that I haven't used in 3 months
- I'm using Windows Classic Interface from Explorer->Tools->Folder
Options->General tab
- In Explorer->Tools->Folder Options->View, I've uncheck all the following:
* Automatically search for network folders or printers
* Display file size information in folder tips
* Remember each folder's view settings
* Show popup description for folder and desktop items
Additionally, I've SELECTED "Do not cache thumbnails"
- I've disabled "Allow indexing service to index this disk for fast file
searching" in the Properties window->General tab of C:\
- No files/folder are shared on my system
- I haven't touched the Prefetch registry settings or files in the Prefetch
folder because Windows experts say that it doesn't degrade either startup or
runtime performance

What the devil is wrong? Anyone have any ideas or suggestions? I'm ready to
throw the damn machine and OS out the window and switch to Linux or a Mac.

 

[Ron Martell]

I have a Windows XP Pro SP2-based machine that is God-awfully slow. Here are
the symptoms:

# Startup takes at least 4-5 mins after I type in my login username/password

Try using the Windows XP Boot Logger from
http://greatis.com/utilities/bootlogxp/ and see if that points to
anything problematic.

Here's my hardware configuration:
My machine is a Dell Latitude D610 running 1GB RAM using a Pentium M 1.86GHz
Processor. It's configured to use about 1.5GB of virtual memory and has about
17 GB free hard disk space. The machine has no attached USB or external
drives. I have a single partition (C of 60GB.

Dell Machines come preloaded with an incredible amount of totally
unnecessary crud and corruption. Have you cleaned this up?

I've run through all the usual things to do:
- Run msconfig and turned off all but the most vital tasks
- I always keep McAfee, Windows Defender and the Windows Firewall turned on
and running with the latest virus definitions

Aha. McAfee. That has a well-deserved reputation for bogging down
computers. As an experiment, uninstall McAfee and install the free
version of AVG from http://free.grisoft.com and see if that makes a
difference.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

 

[Guest]

I forgot to mention that I've also turned off most non-essential non-MS
services except a few that absolutely need to run such as Cisco VPN, Perforce
and McAfee (the latter, I'll turn off now).

Dell Machines come preloaded with an incredible amount of totally
unnecessary crud and corruption. Have you cleaned this up?

Yes I have - I've uninstalled many of those tools, except for "Quickset" and
2 others. Of those, I've made sure that none startup or run at any time. I've
also ensured that none of them have embedded themselves in Explorer's DLL
load set. Does that help?

Aha. McAfee. That has a well-deserved reputation for bogging down
computers. As an experiment, uninstall McAfee and install the free
version of AVG from http://free.grisoft.com and see if that makes a
difference.

I may have some difficulty uninstalling McAfee for political reasons (the IT
dept won't allow it). However, I can disable it from starting up through
msconfig. Would that help narrow down the problem? I will try grisoft,
though.

Thanks!

 

[JS]

Another tool to try is Autoruns from SysInternals:
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Autoruns.html
This will show all apps/etc. that load/run when you first boot and
selectively allow you to stop any that you don't want.

Note: You may need to highlight an item (right click) and use the Google
option on some entries to get the details for more obscure items in the
list.

JS

I have a Windows XP Pro SP2-based machine that is God-awfully slow. Here
are
the symptoms:

# Startup takes at least 4-5 mins after I type in my login
username/password
# While starting up, nothing responds anywhere, including on the taskbar,
and the system clock shows up after ages
# Starting up applications takes forever - simple apps like IE or Firefox
take anywhere from 1-3 mins to start
# Starting very recently, the harddisk seems to be *frantically* running
almost all the time - grind, grind, grind - even when I'm not running any
applications (the CPU usage is just 1%)
# Right clicking on a file or folder in Explorer brings up the context
menu
after 10-15 seconds instead of faster
# In Explorer, when trying to open a folder containing either a large
number
of graphic files (such as .ico files) or several large MS Office documents
(each 5-50MB), the system seems to hang/freeze for several minutes
# While starting up (after logging in) the display intermittently blinks
off
and on a couple of times (as if it lost power) before stabilizing

Here's my hardware configuration:
My machine is a Dell Latitude D610 running 1GB RAM using a Pentium M
1.86GHz
Processor. It's configured to use about 1.5GB of virtual memory and has
about
17 GB free hard disk space. The machine has no attached USB or external
drives. I have a single partition (C of 60GB.

I've run through all the usual things to do:
- Run msconfig and turned off all but the most vital tasks
- I always keep McAfee, Windows Defender and the Windows Firewall turned
on
and running with the latest virus definitions
- I've run through McAfee, Windows Defender, CCleaner, Adaware and none of
them showed up anything. I've run TrendMicro's, Panda's, Kaspersky's and
BitDefender's online virus scans and they didn't show up anything either
- My temporary internet files (both in IE 6.0 and Firefox) and Recycle Bin
are cleaned up, and running Disk Cleaner shows that I have very little
"crap"
- I've configured my system settings for maximum performance (Control
Panel->System->Advanced->Performance->Settings-Adjust for best
performance)
- I've used Process Explorer and Dependency Checker on explorer.exe, and
it
does not load any non-Microsoft DLLs
- I've turned off the indexing system using the instructions in the
Microsoft support knowledge base
- I've configured the system to search for DLLs starting from the
Windows/system32 folder instead of the home folder (using the
SafeDllSearchMode) based on instructions in the Microsoft support
knowledge
base
- I've not configured or mapped any network drives
- I have pretty fast network connectivity both at work (T1/LAN) and at
home
(Cable) and I'm not accessing anything through a proxy
- My CPU usage during [supposedly] idle times is 1% (unless McAfee kicks
in)
even though the harddisk seems to be working ALL the time
- I've uninstalled most applications that I haven't used in 3 months
- I'm using Windows Classic Interface from Explorer->Tools->Folder
Options->General tab
- In Explorer->Tools->Folder Options->View, I've uncheck all the
following:
* Automatically search for network folders or printers
* Display file size information in folder tips
* Remember each folder's view settings
* Show popup description for folder and desktop items
Additionally, I've SELECTED "Do not cache thumbnails"
- I've disabled "Allow indexing service to index this disk for fast file
searching" in the Properties window->General tab of C:\
- No files/folder are shared on my system
- I haven't touched the Prefetch registry settings or files in the
Prefetch
folder because Windows experts say that it doesn't degrade either startup
or
runtime performance

What the devil is wrong? Anyone have any ideas or suggestions? I'm ready
to
throw the damn machine and OS out the window and switch to Linux or a Mac.

 

[Guest]

BootLogXP is a cool tool! Thanks!
I ran both that and autorunsc and have a dump of the startup processes.

Of course, now I have to painstakingly walk through each process and sys
file to figure out what it does and whether its needed or not

Strangely enough, several instances of svchost (3 actually) and 1 instance
of explorer.exe were the biggest culprits, taking 1+ minutes each and 2+
minutes respectively to run.

Other time consumers were Windows Defender (1 minute), McAfee UpdaterUI (1
minute), services.exe (1 minute) and lsass.exe (1 minute).

Although using these tools will probably fix the startup time lags,
unfortunately, I doubt it this will address the problem of apps taking
forever to start after the machine has booted completely.

 

[elekchok]

I would try a simple defrag on that drive to see if it may hel
performance a little. You could also try running chkdsk on your c
drive to check for any physical disk errors

...And if you have access to a copy of "Registry Mechanic
or any comparable registry repair utility (consult your IT dept
possibly), I'd try running that also. I'm betting that you have
myriad of registry issues if it's not an actual hardware problem

 

[Guest]

Thank you everyone for your help in resolving this.

Some of the changes suggested here (BootLogXp, Defrag, toss McAfee instead
of the machine itself) helped resolve the issue in addition to those that
were posted by Steve and others at the Windows Performance and Maintenance
group at
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/.../windowsxp/expertzone/newsgroups/settings.xml.

BootLogXp helped identify some of the dlls and sys files that were choking
explorer's bootup and post-bootup performance.

Someone ought to put together a checklist of "Things to do when your Windows
XP machine slows down to an apoplectic-inducing crawl". I trawled through
hundreds of posts and collected a list of 18 things to do before I posted my
problems here. Folks then suggested a dozen more things to do. Looks like
there's a lot of scattered info out there waiting to be compiled in one place.