do I need to "rebuild" Windows ?

[Guest]

I have XP Home on a 2 year old Dell laptop ( 512mb ram, 2.2 gb processor,
60gb drive with 22gb free).

What was once a lightening fast system is now a slow start up PC with
intermittent problems. i.e. (1) when clicking on My Documents from Windows
Explorer, the system hangs. I can only get to my files through the
applications (Word, etc.). (2) The "My Computer" icon is a shortcut, not the
original icon.

I run all the diags (Norton, defrag, Spy Sweeper) frequently. I've run
Microsoft Office Scan and Repair.

I have a lot of programs, etc., and use this laptop 8-10 hours a day for
business.

Is it worth the 1-2 days it would take to start the system over with the
original CD, and reload all my progams and data? I am backed up on an
external disk drive.

thanks a lot, Joe

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have XP Home on a 2 year old Dell laptop ( 512mb ram, 2.2 gb processor,
60gb drive with 22gb free).

What was once a lightening fast system is now a slow start up PC with
intermittent problems. i.e. (1) when clicking on My Documents from Windows
Explorer, the system hangs. I can only get to my files through the
applications (Word, etc.). (2) The "My Computer" icon is a shortcut, not the
original icon.

I run all the diags (Norton, defrag, Spy Sweeper) frequently. I've run
Microsoft Office Scan and Repair.

I have a lot of programs, etc., and use this laptop 8-10 hours a day for
business.

Is it worth the 1-2 days it would take to start the system over with the
original CD, and reload all my progams and data? I am backed up on an
external disk drive.

thanks a lot, Joe

It's the sort of thing I do about once a year when my machine
starts misbehaving, with one exception: Twice each year I take
a snapshot of my machine, using an imaging product such as
Acronis or Ghost. When rebuilding the machine I use the most
recent snapshot, thus reducing the rebuild time to one hour.

Imaging machines works at its best when data is stored on
a separate drive, e.g. drive D:.

 

[Guest]

I have Norton Ghost but have never used it. Would the the "ghosted" copy
contain any system problems that a reinstall of Windows is supposed to fix?

I'm concerned that I can't get into My Documents from Windows Explorer. The
system just hangs for 20 + minutes, with the hard drive banging full time,
then I C-A-D. Makes it harder to navigate.

If I could do this in a couple of hours it would be great. I do have a large
external drive.

Is it a complicated process?

Thanks.

 

[Anna]

I have Norton Ghost but have never used it. Would the the "ghosted" copy
contain any system problems that a reinstall of Windows is supposed to
fix?

I'm concerned that I can't get into My Documents from Windows Explorer.
The
system just hangs for 20 + minutes, with the hard drive banging full time,
then I C-A-D. Makes it harder to navigate.

If I could do this in a couple of hours it would be great. I do have a
large
external drive.

Is it a complicated process?

Thanks.

Wizard or Joe:
A cloned copy of the contents of your source disk would contain *all* the
operating system problems on that disk. If you clone "garbage", garbage is
what you'll get. For all practical purposes, the cloned copy is a
bit-for-bit copy of your source disk.

If the backup copy you presently have is a clone of your internal HD that is
currently residing on your external hard drive and is a "clean" copy, absent
of any system files corruption, then you could (using the Ghost program)
clone the contents of that EHD back to your internal drive for restoration
purposes. But since you say that you've never used Ghost, I can only assume
the back up on your EHD is *not* a clone. Is that right? Is it merely a
backup of your data files? If so, that, of course, wouldn't do the job.

So the bottom line is this...

If you don't have a "clean clone" at your disposal, you've got to clean up,
one way or another, your present system. Once you do that, then create a
"good" clone on your EHD.
Anna

 

[Peter Foldes]

When did you defragment last?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Wizard or Joe:

If you don't have a "clean clone" at your disposal, you've got to clean up,
one way or another, your present system. Once you do that, then create a
"good" clone on your EHD.
Anna

Exactly. And six months later, when you create another clone, keep
the previous one until you are absolutely sure that the new clone is
"good".

 

[Pat Willener]

I've had my XP Pro system for several years now, and it hasn't slowed
down a bit. I use several tools to keep my system running smoothly.
- Ccleaner; removes unnecessary files from system
- Startup Inspector; helps removing unnecessary startup programs
- Diskeeper; defragments files, folder file, MFT, and pagefile
- Microsoft Antispyware; keeps malware away

If you suspect that system files are missing or corrupt, you can use the
system file checker (sfc.exe) to restore them.

 

[Richard in AZ]

For a short term fix on the problem related to opening either "my computer"
or "files" in "windows explorer" to the System Configuration file (Start -
Run- type in "msconfig")
Go to the "Service" tab and disable the "windows image acquisition"
reboot and try the file access again.

 

[Ron Martell]

I have XP Home on a 2 year old Dell laptop ( 512mb ram, 2.2 gb processor,
60gb drive with 22gb free).

What was once a lightening fast system is now a slow start up PC with
intermittent problems. i.e. (1) when clicking on My Documents from Windows
Explorer, the system hangs. I can only get to my files through the
applications (Word, etc.). (2) The "My Computer" icon is a shortcut, not the
original icon.

I run all the diags (Norton, defrag, Spy Sweeper) frequently. I've run
Microsoft Office Scan and Repair.

I have a lot of programs, etc., and use this laptop 8-10 hours a day for
business.

Is it worth the 1-2 days it would take to start the system over with the
original CD, and reload all my progams and data? I am backed up on an
external disk drive.

thanks a lot, Joe

There are two main reasons for slow performance in Windows XP:

1. Two many background "tools and toys" (a.k.a. crap and corruption)
being loaded when the compute starts up. Use Start - Run - MSCONFIG
and go to the Startup tab. Compare the list of items that are loading
at startup with the following checklist web site to see what can be
safely dispensed with:

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php

Note: Please ensure that you fully understand the purpose of a
startup item, how and why it was put into the startup, and the
consequences (if any) of removing it before you make any changes. Some
items are very important for the proper and safe functioning of your
computer, including at least one item that is listed twice.

Disabling an item by unchecking it in MSCONFIG should only be done for
testing purposes or as a "last resort" when no other way of getting
rid of the unwanted item can be found.

2. Insufficient physical RAM to cope with the application load being
placed on the machine. Adding more memory can noticeably improve
performance only if the added memory results in reduced usage of the
virtual memory paging file. Therefore if the paging file is not
currently being used to any significant extent then adding more memory
will not provide a significant improvement.

Unfortunately there is no ready way of determing actual paging file
usage provided with Windows XP - it does not have an equivalent to the
'Memory Manager - Swap File In Use" reporting provided by the System
Monitor utility in Windows 95/98/Me.

There is a free utility that you can download and run which will
provide this information for you. It was written by MVP Bill James and
you can get if from
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm or from
http://billsway.com/notes_public/WinXP_Tweaks/

If that utility shows actual page file usage of 50 mb or more on a
regular basis then that is indicative of fairly significant paging
file activity. Adding more RAM will reduce or even eliminate entirely
this activity thereby improving performance.

This apples regardless of how much or how little RAM is currently
installed in the computer, at least up to the 4 gb RAM maximum for
Windows XP.


Hope this is of some assistance.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm

 

[Stan Brown]

I have Norton Ghost but have never used it. Would the the "ghosted" copy
contain any system problems that a reinstall of Windows is supposed to fix?

Yes. Ghosting or imaging takes a snapshot of your drive as it is, not
as you would wish it to be.

The PP's advice to use an image makes sense when you have a sudden
problem and you know when it stated even if you don't know why -- you
just use the latest pre-problem image. But that strategy is IMHO
worthless to deal with gradual systemic degradation such as you've
experienced.

You _have_ run a good virus scan and one or more good spyware
checkers, I assume?

Next try Autoruns, a free program from <http://www.sysinternals.com>.
It will show you everything that starts up automatically; most likely
you don't need a lot of that cruft and disabling it -- which you can
do in Autoruns -- will speed up your system after a reboot. A cool
feature is that you can right-click any item in Autoruns to google
it.

People talk about starting over all the time with a fresh install,
but it's going to take you days to re-install all your software and
then over a period of weeks you'll be setting your preferences up
again. Yuck!

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

fix?

Yes. Ghosting or imaging takes a snapshot of your drive as it is, not
as you would wish it to be.

The PP's advice to use an image makes sense when you have a sudden
problem and you know when it stated even if you don't know why -- you
just use the latest pre-problem image. But that strategy is IMHO
worthless to deal with gradual systemic degradation such as you've
experienced.

I see where you're coming from but my own experience does
not quite agree with yours.

I run an extremely clean PC, with firewall, virus scanner and
no downloading of funny stuff at all, yet my PC suffers the
occasional insoluble problem such as the one where it would
reboot spontaneously after a few minutes when using products
such as pcAnywhere or WinVNC. Hours of debugging got
me precisely nowhere. Having two recent images (one of
them at least six months old) allows me to restore the system
to a solid condition while losing at most six months worth
of installations. Since my PC is fairly static, this is a minor
issue.

<snip>

 

[MorituriMax]

Note: Please ensure that you fully understand the purpose of a
startup item, how and why it was put into the startup, and the
consequences (if any) of removing it before you make any changes. Some
items are very important for the proper and safe functioning of your
computer, including at least one item that is listed twice.

There's the trick, isn't there? If we knew all that then we would never
need to worry about it.. we could go in every couple days and get rid of the
crap we didn't need.. maybe in a future version of windows they will be
color coded (green-yellow-red) for what can be removed and not put the onus
on us.

have a good one.

 

[Stan Brown]

I see where you're coming from but my own experience does
not quite agree with yours.

I run an extremely clean PC, with firewall, virus scanner and
no downloading of funny stuff at all, yet my PC suffers the
occasional insoluble problem such as the one where it would
reboot spontaneously after a few minutes when using products
such as pcAnywhere or WinVNC. Hours of debugging got
me precisely nowhere. Having two recent images (one of
them at least six months old) allows me to restore the system
to a solid condition while losing at most six months worth
of installations. Since my PC is fairly static, this is a minor
issue.

I think what you say makes sense for how you use your computer. Mine
isn't even fairly static, though I do take pains to run it cleanly.
I'm still downloading and installing applications (after reading
reviews) and changing settings for one feature or another.

 

[Ron Martell]

There's the trick, isn't there? If we knew all that then we would never
need to worry about it.. we could go in every couple days and get rid of the
crap we didn't need.. maybe in a future version of windows they will be
color coded (green-yellow-red) for what can be removed and not put the onus
on us.

have a good one.

That is why there are checklists for the startup items, such as
Pacman's Portal that I posted the link to. Many of the critical
startup items that I was referring to are things such as antivirus,
antispyware, and firewall startup items that are not part of Windows.
Also some hardware requires drivers to be loaded at startup.

If there was such a coding system as you propose then the
virus/malware authors wouldly quickly crack it and ensure that the
startup entries for their nasties were included in the "do not remove"
category.

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm

 

[MorituriMax]

That is why there are checklists for the startup items, such as
Pacman's Portal that I posted the link to. Many of the critical
startup items that I was referring to are things such as antivirus,
antispyware, and firewall startup items that are not part of Windows.
Also some hardware requires drivers to be loaded at startup.

If there was such a coding system as you propose then the
virus/malware authors wouldly quickly crack it and ensure that the
startup entries for their nasties were included in the "do not remove"
category.

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada

D'Oh! Darn.. good point..

Thanks for the information.