Extremely slow response

[bm]

A neighbour asked me to help him with his very slow response computer.
I started by doing a disk clean up followed by getting rid of programmes
which were opening every time he started his PC
This gave some improvement but the system is still dreadfully slow.
What further steps can I take to improve this?
Blair

 

[Paul]

A neighbour asked me to help him with his very slow response computer.
I started by doing a disk clean up followed by getting rid of programmes
which were opening every time he started his PC
This gave some improvement but the system is still dreadfully slow.
What further steps can I take to improve this?
Blair

Check for PIO versus DMA on the hard drive. It could be everything
is slow, because the interface rate to the hard drive is slow (PIO).

I like the free version of HDTune, because it incorporates
a number of convenient and easy to understand functions
with regard to hard drives. In the "Info" tab, see
whether the "Supported" and "Active" mode indicate UDMA.
PIO mode, is much slower by comparison.

http://www.hdtune.com/hdtune_255.exe

See the "Workaround" section here, if you're stuck in PIO mode.
PIO mode could probably be forced from Device Manager, but
it is more likely to have ended up that way because of CRC errors.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;817472

It is also worth mentioning, that you ended up in PIO mode
for a reason. Sometimes, it is an indication that the
hard drive has problems. At the very least, make sure
your neighbour understands what a "backup" is, and that
any important data files are also stored on secondary media
of some sort. I hate sad stories about how "my entire
music collection is gone". Even if the hard drive is
healthy, they all fail some day. Hard drives go for
as little as $40, USB enclosures for pretty cheap as well,
so a backup solution doesn't have to cost a lot. And
extremely large drives are available now (the biggest
is 2TB). The sweet spot, price wise, could be a
1TB drive for $99+. You can keep a lot of data safe
for $99+. A USB enclosure allows the drive to be
disconnected when it is not being used.

Paul

 

[Pegasus [MVP]]

A neighbour asked me to help him with his very slow response computer.
I started by doing a disk clean up followed by getting rid of programmes
which were opening every time he started his PC
This gave some improvement but the system is still dreadfully slow.
What further steps can I take to improve this?
Blair

Click Start / Run, then type msconfig.exe and click OK. Now examine the
entries under the Startup tab. You can safely untick all of them except for
his virus scanner. None of them are essential for the Windows boot process.
If your neighbour later finds that some things no longer operate the way
they used to then you can restore various tick marks selectively.

 

[Randem]

Make sure the physical HD is not the problem or anything you do will be in
vain...

--
Randem Systems
Your Installation Specialist
The Top Inno Setup Script Generator
http://www.randem.com/innoscript.html
Disk Read Error Press Ctl+Alt+Del to Restart
http://www.randem.com/discus/messages/9402/9406.html?1236319938

 

[Jim]

A neighbour asked me to help him with his very slow response computer.
I started by doing a disk clean up followed by getting rid of programmes
which were opening every time he started his PC
This gave some improvement but the system is still dreadfully slow.
What further steps can I take to improve this?
Blair

D/l and run both , (free editions ) ,
http://www.superantispyware.com/
http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

 

[Jack Leach]

If you are talking about overall performance and not startup performance,
here's the steps I would usually take in such a scencario (not necessarily in
this order...):

- Add/Remove Programs. Go through this list and get rid of anything that's
not essential. Lots of people wind up with more programs in here that do
absolutely nothing for them than programs that they actually use.

- Minimize the amount of programs running on startup or in the background.
Especially programs on startup, again alots of people have these programs
taking up startup performance and resources without any requirement.

- Disk Cleanup/Defragment

- Security and Restore Points. Depending on how comfortable you (your
friend) is with not having restore points, apparently there can be a lot of
performance gained by turning these features off. This goes for any
'hybernation' modes as well, as the system creates images at a fairly regular
interval.

Disclaimer - I only sort of know what I'm talking about, so swallow this
with some salt

Regular defragmentation, keeping useless programs uninstalled and keeping
the background processes to a minimum seem to be the biggest players.

hth

 

[Ǝиçεl]

Hello Blair,

The others helpers gave you very good advice. I'd just like to add
that........

I located the following:

<http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/maintenance.mspx>

Follow the links in that procedure.



Good luck


ƎиçΞᴌ
-=-

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

A neighbour asked me to help him with his very slow response computer.
I started by doing a disk clean up followed by getting rid of programmes
which were opening every time he started his PC
This gave some improvement but the system is still dreadfully slow.
What further steps can I take to improve this?

The first should always be to check very carefully and thoroughly, and
with more than one program, for malware infection--both for viruses
and spyware. Such infection is one of the most common causes of poor
performance these days.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

If you are talking about overall performance and not startup performance,
here's the steps I would usually take in such a scencario (not necessarily in
this order...):

- Add/Remove Programs. Go through this list and get rid of anything that's
not essential. Lots of people wind up with more programs in here that do
absolutely nothing for them than programs that they actually use.

This is not correct. What programs are installed, or even whether
something is installed that is never used, has *nothing* to do with
performance. Good or bad performance is the results of what's running,
not what's installed.

- Minimize the amount of programs running on startup or in the background.
Especially programs on startup, again alots of people have these programs
taking up startup performance and resources without any requirement.

The *number* of programs that start automatically or run in the
background is not the issue. Despite what many people tell you, you
should be concerned, not with how *many* of these programs you run,
but *which*. Some of them can hurt performance severely, but others
have no effect on performance.

Don't just stop programs from running willy-nilly. What you should do
is determine what each program is, what its value is to you, and what
the cost in performance is of its running all the time. You can try
google searches and ask about specifics here.

Once you have that information, you can make an intelligent informed
decision about what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.

- Disk Cleanup/Defragment

These are certainly good to do, but defragmenting is considerably less
important than it was back in the days of Windows 9X.

- Security and Restore Points. Depending on how comfortable you (your
friend) is with not having restore points, apparently there can be a lot of
performance gained by turning these features off. This goes for any
'hybernation' modes as well, as the system creates images at a fairly regular
interval.

I strongly disagree. A restore point is normally created once a day.
Yes, that will use computer resources while it's running, but it
doesn't take very long, so its impact is very slight. Moreover,
creation of a restore point is only done when nothing else is going
on.

Disclaimer - I only sort of know what I'm talking about, so swallow this
with some salt

Regular defragmentation, keeping useless programs uninstalled and keeping
the background processes to a minimum seem to be the biggest players.

Once again, I disagree with all three of those points.

 

[Jack Leach]

Thanks for the clarification Ken.

I had thought that the amount of programs installed might be a performance
issue on a machine with limited resources (e.g. fairly full hard drive or low
amounts of ram), and I should have mentioned to check for *intensive usage*
programs in the background that may not be required.

--
Jack Leach

"I haven't failed, I've found ten thousand ways that don't work."
-Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Thanks for the clarification Ken.

You're welcome. Glad to help.

I had thought that the amount of programs installed might be a performance
issue on a machine with limited resources (e.g. fairly full hard drive or low
amounts of ram),

Yes, it could be an issue if you need a page file, and you don't have
enough disk space for one that's big enough. Or if you don't have
enough disk space, you can't defrag. But these are highly specialized
situations, not general ones. As a general rule, how much or what you
have on the disk drive has no effect on performance.

and I should have mentioned to check for *intensive usage*
programs in the background that may not be required.

Yes, whether in the foreground or background, anything you are running
that uses substantial computer resources will hurt performance. And if
it's something that you don't need, it's clearly a waste.

 

[PA Bear [MS MVP]]

Help! My computer is slow!
http://miekiemoes.blogspot.com/2008/02/help-my-computer-is-slow.html

 

[bm]

I am extremely grateful for all the replies I received. I am now working
through the various suggestions but I have the feeling that it probably is
malware as the change happened so suddenly after my neighbour had a complete
freeze on his PC
I managed to get it going again with the result being a slow down.
Blair