xp home running extremely slow

[Guest]

Hi,

I have a PIII 800mhz with 512MB of Ram. I did a fresh install of XP home
about 6 months ago, and the computer has been running very well (the PIII,
800mhz has been suprisingly adequate)...until recently.

I have not installed any new applications or hardware that would affect
performance.

Symptoms: Very slow performance, I can open only IE and pages load very
slowly. The yellow XP menus fade in and out in clunky "phases". My
resolution sometimes gets reset on restarts (From 1400 to 1024).

Actions Taken: I've run MS Anti-Spyware, Trend Micro Scan and Panda...no
spyware or viruses found. I've defragmented, run cleandisk, turned off
system restore, removed unneeded programs and have trimmed the start menu
down to bare essentials. I hired a tech to look into it (he did some of the
steps above)--no help.

Please help. I don't know what to do next and I am really trying to avoid
doing a fresh reinstall (again)...

Thanks!

 

[Guest]

oops. to clarify, I said "I can open only IE", I meant to say "for example,
if I only open IE, the system still runs extremely slow..."

sorry about that.

 

[Guest]

I find that I have good luck with the following programs/websites for PC
speed issues:

Sisoft Sandra - http://www.sisoftware.net/
PC Pitstop - http://www.pcpitstop.com/

Armed with their advice you can then start troubleshooting your system.

- John

 

[Guest]

I downloaded Sandra and ran the modules...everything came back as normal
(which, I don't know how it could).

Sandra had some minor recommendations that I did for those that I could (one
was, turn off VGA snooping in the BIOS, which I could find no such setting).

One other piece I did forget to mention is that the problems did seem to
occur after I ran MS Explorer for the first time to try and get on the
internet via dial-up, and that's the first time I noted the slowness...if
that helps at all.

Again, any help is greatly appreciated.