Slow PC using XP Home

[GTS]

Hi was looking at a PC for a friend -almost new HP Pavillion.
Trouble is it is so slow that it is almost impossible to actually do
anything to diagnose - I mean five minutes to open an application. However I
did manage to confirm no spyware or virus, and the CPU usage is almost nil.
The syptom is really an incredibly slow hard drive. UDMA is enabled, no
SMART errors reported in Everest, drive does not need defrag, no errors
found, 86% free space.
The one obvious thing is that you cannot get into System Information as 'WMI
is corrupted', and cannot get into System Restore - it comes up with an
error about RSTRUI cannot find a file.
So any ideas? The PC has been used so little, and was OK at first, but the
HDD feels and sounds so slow I cannot ever using a hard drive as slow as it
is, even ten years ago!
TIA
Graham

 

[T. Waters]

I would have suggested doing a Repair Install of the operating system, but I
do not believe that the media provided by HP can perform this.
Fortunately, your friend's machine is under warranty, but of course HP will
want the machine "restored" to factory software setup as part of
troubleshooting.
There could still be some malware involved, so scanning with a variety of
anti-malware programs is a good idea if your friend is not too keen on an
immediate factory restoration.

 

[Jon]

Assuming a fairly fast processor, sufficient RAM etc ......

Try the system file checker

Start > run > sfc / scannow

This site may help with the corrupted wmi
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wmisdk/wmi/reinstalling_wmi.asp

Also check your startup programs
Start > run > msconfig > startup tab
(as an experiment you could click on "disable all" and reboot to see if that
solves the speed problem. If it does then reenable the startup programs one
by one to identify the culprit)

Jon

 

[GTS]

I would have suggested doing a Repair Install of the operating system, but I
do not believe that the media provided by HP can perform this.
Fortunately, your friend's machine is under warranty, but of course HP will
want the machine "restored" to factory software setup as part of
troubleshooting.
There could still be some malware involved, so scanning with a variety of
anti-malware programs is a good idea if your friend is not too keen on an
immediate factory restoration.

Thanks for the reply - you are right there is no media for reinstall, it's
all in a small partition of the HDD. However there are two recovery options,
one of which resinstalls Windows files without deleting your documents -
similar to a repair install - and a 'Destructive' reinstall that wipes the
drive. He has tried the first option but got similar odd behaviour after.
Next step will be a full reinstall. However I was just curious about the
slow behaviour as I've not seen anything like it before, and tried eveything
I could think of. I used Ad-Aware and the MS spyware scanner, but to
indicate how little it's been used Ad-Aware only found four items, and they
were just data-miners...
Graham

 

[GTS]

Assuming a fairly fast processor, sufficient RAM etc ......

Try the system file checker

Start > run > sfc / scannow

This site may help with the corrupted wmi
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wmisdk/wmi/reinstalling_wmi.asp

Also check your startup programs
Start > run > msconfig > startup tab
(as an experiment you could click on "disable all" and reboot to see if that
solves the speed problem. If it does then reenable the startup programs one
by one to identify the culprit)

Jon

Thanks - I did disable the start-up progs in msconfig, and set a lot of
services to manual - but did not know about the system file checker or the
ability to reinstall the WMI - too late now, as reinstall in progress, but
was just curious.
Graham

 

[Ron Martell]

Hi was looking at a PC for a friend -almost new HP Pavillion.
Trouble is it is so slow that it is almost impossible to actually do
anything to diagnose - I mean five minutes to open an application. However I
did manage to confirm no spyware or virus, and the CPU usage is almost nil.
The syptom is really an incredibly slow hard drive. UDMA is enabled, no
SMART errors reported in Everest, drive does not need defrag, no errors
found, 86% free space.
The one obvious thing is that you cannot get into System Information as 'WMI
is corrupted', and cannot get into System Restore - it comes up with an
error about RSTRUI cannot find a file.
So any ideas? The PC has been used so little, and was OK at first, but the
HDD feels and sounds so slow I cannot ever using a hard drive as slow as it
is, even ten years ago!
TIA
Graham

How much RAM does the PC have? HP & Compaq are notorious for selling
Windows XP systems with as little as 128 mb of RAM, which is woefully
inadequate especially with all the preinstalled crap and corruption
they load these systems up with. And doubly so if Norton/Symantec
products are installed.

The critical factor in assessing the potential benefit of a RAM
upgrade is the amount of actual pagefile usage that is occurring -
that is how much active memory content is being relocated from RAM to
the paging file so as to allow that RAM to be used for other,
currently more important purposes.

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.

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

 

[Newsreader]

Sounds like some Spyware has gotten by your Spyware Detection program.
Better Check for it again with a different Spyware check program ( maybe
Spybot 1.3)