really really slow

[Guest]

Win XP SP0
Compaq Presario Desktop 4410
Celeron 1.3 GHZ
128 MB ram

23 MB available, per Task Manager.


Owner had lots of popups & mis-directions.

Steps taken thus far:
scanned for spyware, malware - removed them. Thread posted at
http://forums.techguy.org/showthrea...109#post2273109
Scanned for viri at Panda which found & fixed 7; Norton found none.
Virus logs show that the PC had been infected with KLEZ & W32.yaha.k .
sfc /scannow

I have set the bios to boot from the floppy disk drive, but it ignores the
setting, so I can't run a ram diagnostic, nor a hard drive diagnostic outside
of Windows.

Slow also in safe mode.

Your suggestions are welcome.

WC

 

[Bill James]

In my experience, Windows XP on a machine with 128 MB of RAM is going to be slow no matter what you do. The fact that Task Manager shows free RAM is not relevant, there will always be some physical memory left available even while memory requirements are being swapped out to the page file. You can help performance a little by turning off all the eye candy and avoiding running multiple memory hungry applications at the same time, and remove any items from startup that aren't essential. A defrag could help too if it hasn't been done recently. But, it's still going to be sluggish with 128 MB and adding RAM is the best way to improve the performance.

--

Bill James
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User

Windows VBScript Utilities » www.billsway.com/vbspage/
Windows Tweaks & Tips » www.billsway.com/notes_public/

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Win XP SP0
Compaq Presario Desktop 4410
Celeron 1.3 GHZ
128 MB ram

The last line above is the answer.
How much RAM you need depends on what apps you run, but almost
anyone doing more with Windows XP than playing solitaire needs
more than 128MB. Most people running a typical range of business
applications find that somewhere around 256-384MB works well,
others need 512MB. Some people, particularly those doing things
like editing large photographic images can see a performance
boost by adding even more--sometimes much more.

 

[Guest]

I resolved the problem by uninstalling the Cox popup blocker software that
had been partially installed, and tried to install at startup, but needed a
password.

WC