slow; many hesitations

[Paul Pedersen]

A friend's computer has started getting very slow at times. Some processes,
such as opening an application, or even Windows Explorer drawing the
contents of windows, are occasionally ridiculously slow for no obvious
reason. If it were a car, I'd say that it wasn't getting enough fuel to the
cylinders.

There's 1.5GB of RAM and plenty of disk space.

I tried killing most nonessential processes. No change. Task Manager shows
no unusual activity (System Idle process is 97%+). Strangely, starting in
safe mode makes no difference - it's still very slow, lots of hesitation.

Any ideas what might be wrong? Could it be a hardware problem? What?

 

[Gerry]

Paul

Have a look in the System and Application logs in Event Viewer for
Errors and Warnings and post copies here. Don't post any more than 48
hours ago.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer. When researching the meaning
of the error, information regarding Event ID, Source and Description
are important.

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427/en-us

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.

Try HD Tune. It only gives information and does not fix any
problems.

Download and run it and see what it turns up. You want HD Tune
(freeware) version 2.55 not HD Tune Pro (not Freeware) version 3.00.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Select the Info tabs and place the cursor on the drive under Drive
letter and then double click the two page icon ( copy to Clipboard )
and copy into a further message.

Select the Health tab and then double click the two page icon ( copy to
Clipboard ) and copy into a further message. Make sure you do a full
surface scan with HD Tune.

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Daave]

A friend's computer has started getting very slow at times. Some
processes, such as opening an application, or even Windows Explorer
drawing the contents of windows, are occasionally ridiculously slow
for no obvious reason. If it were a car, I'd say that it wasn't
getting enough fuel to the cylinders.

There's 1.5GB of RAM and plenty of disk space.

I tried killing most nonessential processes. No change. Task Manager
shows no unusual activity (System Idle process is 97%+). Strangely,
starting in safe mode makes no difference - it's still very slow,
lots of hesitation.
Any ideas what might be wrong? Could it be a hardware problem? What?

Although it might be a hardware problem, I would first suspect malware.

Try booting off a live rescue CD like Knoppix, Bart PE, UBCD4Win, etc.
If your friend's PC is no longer ridiculously slow, there is a problem
with Windows, probably malware. Then look at:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Viruses_Malware

If not, then there is a hardware problem. See:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Tshoot

 

[Paul Pedersen]

Nothing special in the event log.

HD Tune reported some unexpected but significant slowdowns in disk access. I
ran chkdsk (or whichever one it is that Windows uses now), but my friend
reports no improvement.

FWIW, the slowdown does not happen all the time. Often, it's just as zippy
as ever.

She uses Outlook a lot, and its file has gotten close to 1GB in size.
Perhaps it has become severely fragmented and could use packing and/or
archiving of the data. But then, when it does have problems I haven't
noticed any disk thrashing.

 

[Paul Pedersen]

Although it might be a hardware problem, I would first suspect malware.

Try booting off a live rescue CD like Knoppix, Bart PE, UBCD4Win, etc. If
your friend's PC is no longer ridiculously slow, there is a problem with
Windows, probably malware. Then look at:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Viruses_Malware

If not, then there is a hardware problem. See:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Tshoot

Could be. It uses the excellent NOD32, but in theory, something could have
slipped past.

Thanks for the links.

 

[Gerry]

Paul

A system handling a 1GB file is likely to stumble. I do not use Outlook but
surely she can reorganise so that the system is handling smaller files.
Depending on the amount of free disk defragment will as you say be a
problem.


--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~