computer slowing

[James]

Windows XP Home Ed.
800 Mhz CPU
384 Mb RAM
Norton Internet Security Suite (firewall + antivirus)
Adaware and Spybot

I've noticed my wife's computer (above) slowing down appreciably over
the past four months. We run the above spyware programs frequently and
scan for viruses weekly. She clears out her temp files as well.

Question: Is the Norton draining her system resources by running in the
background? Would the free version of ZA + Avg be less demanding upon
her resources and help speed things up?

Thanks.
ps: above address munged
leushino"at"yahoo"dot"com

 

[dev]

/James/ said:

Windows XP Home Ed.
800 Mhz CPU
384 Mb RAM
Norton Internet Security Suite (firewall + antivirus)
Adaware and Spybot

I've noticed my wife's computer (above) slowing down appreciably over
the past four months. We run the above spyware programs frequently and
scan for viruses weekly. She clears out her temp files as well.

Question: Is the Norton draining her system resources by running in the
background? Would the free version of ZA + Avg be less demanding upon
her resources and help speed things up?

As a diagnostic measure, consider disabling all background utilities,
including Norton. Also see...

http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/expertzone/columns/northrup/restoreperf.asp

 

[Jud McCranie]

Question: Is the Norton draining her system resources by running in the

background?

One thing you can do is Ctrl-alt-delee, then the processes tab, click on the
CPU column (twice) to get it to sort by CPU percentage, and see if anything
is using a large % of the CPU.

 

[Kelly]

Hi James,

Run the Task Manager, go to View/Select Columns, and turn on the following
columns: "I/O Read Bytes" and "I/O Write Bytes."

Hard Disk Performance Is Slower Than You Expect
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q308219

Unexplained computer behavior may be caused by deceptive software
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;827315

 

[Bill]

Windows XP Home Ed.
800 Mhz CPU
384 Mb RAM
Norton Internet Security Suite (firewall + antivirus)
Adaware and Spybot

I've noticed my wife's computer (above) slowing down appreciably over
the past four months. We run the above spyware programs frequently and
scan for viruses weekly. She clears out her temp files as well.

Question: Is the Norton draining her system resources by running in the
background? Would the free version of ZA + Avg be less demanding upon
her resources and help speed things up?

Thanks.
ps: above address munged
leushino"at"yahoo"dot"com

scan and defrag disk?