slow pc (XP)

[eein]

Hi,

I have an odd problem that I can't seem to get to the bottom of. I have an AMD 2200 processor and am running XP. I have all the windows update installed up to date and service pack 1. I have a G400 graphhics card and a Logitech Ms700 mouse.

The problem is that the pc is always slow. When I look at the performance monitor, with nothing else running and not touching anything, the CPU has about 20% utilisation. If I move the mouse, the untilisation goes up to about 60%. The PC feels notcibly slow. When I look at the processes running, the CPU column figures do not add up to the utilisation in the graph.

Also, this has not always been the case - the PC ran fine for months, then this started and it is always slow. It happened before and I got rid of it by reinstalling everyting including XP and it was ok for a while.

I am highly computer literate and know quite a bit about winodws, but I just can work this one out. I have installed latest drivers for everything and run various spy-ware removal programs.

any suggestions welcome!

Iain

 

[Zoulz]

How much memory have you got ?

i hear XP eats ram for breakfast
which can slow it all down

why your mouse would have an affect i dont know, try another mouse maybe

My system below and XP works fine

my old system had very similar symtoms to what you said, i did clean install and made sure i had firewall and virus software installed before i hooked up to the net and never had the problem again. but thats prob got nothing to do with it.

 

[kurokaze]

eein, have you checked to see what program is causing the CPU spike? and how many things do you have running?

 

[eein]

When I look at the processes and sort by CPU time, most is taken up by the system idle process, but now and again csrss.exe jumps up. It seems to follow when the spikes are, but not not seem to be for the same percentage - but the CPU figure may be averaged over a second or so. I have tried to find out about this file, but can't find much.

 

[eein]

I have 512 of memory. And I have tried a couple of other mice. I have also previously reinstalled windows and have always had a firewall and virus protection. I also use XP at work on cPCI systems a lot and never seen a problem like this.

I have wondered if it was my graphics card at one point (G400), but I have put the latest driver off the website with no difference.

I'm not too bothered about find a solution as the PC is still perfectly useable and I dont do any gaming or htings like that. Its really curiostiy that I want to sort it. I'm sure I'll want to reisntall XP sometime soon anyway which will get rid of it for a while.

Iain

 

[muckshifter]

Client/Server Runtime Server Subsystem;
csrss.exe - You cannot end this process from Task Manager.
This is the user-mode portion of the Win32 subsystem (with Win32.sys being the kernel-mode portion). csrss stands for client/server run-time subsystem and is an essential subsystem that must be running at all times. csrss is responsible for console windows, creating and/or deleting threads, and some parts of the 16-bit virtual MS-DOS environment.

One possible cause of csrss ‘jumping into life’ is a Trojan on you system. Trojans are different from viruses in that AV programs are not designed to detect them (though a good AV prog will have “the usual list of known” beasties), you’re going to need a Trojan Scanner, such as Trojan Hunter. DL it & run it to be sure, the free trial period should be used with respect. If you like it, buy it.

If your not using the likes of Ad-aware or SpybotSD then I highly recommend you download one or the other, most people use both. Ad-aware is very safe but SBSD can, if you tinker, mess up your system, read how to ‘configure’ SBSD.

One last note …
… check in your Start/All Programes/Startup and delete any or all programes you find there, except ZoneAlarm … you need that one if in use … even anything to do with Office (any version), they are not needed. You can start-up any program listed in Startup manually.

 

[kurokaze]

Great response muckshifter!

 

[eein]

I have now removed all the stuff in the startup folder and it seems to have reduced the severity of the problem to a much more acceptable level. I'm still sure something is not right, but am much more happy now that it does not cause all my gambling software to go slow!

After years of fixing pc problems, I had forgotton about the simple 'delete all the crap in the startup folder' thing! THe things I found in it were all normal (gamma loader, office, etc) except for one thing called something like "dllhelper.exe" which I've not hear or seen before. Anyway, I deleted them all and things are better.

I also did that trojan thing as well - seems a decent program and I may consider paying the fee after the trial period. I already use ad-aware regularly, but I don't htink it catches everything.

Thanks for the help!

Iain

 

[eein]

Just thought I'd let you all know the 'actual' final outcome of my slow pc. Doing the stuff above helped slightly, but the problem was still very much there.

Then today I realised the problem. I have a deaul head graphics card (Matrox G400) that can do a desktop clone to the tv. I turned this off and things are all better.

I don't remember turning it on, but I did reinstall the Matrox driver with the latest one off thier website a while back to try and fix another unrelated problem I've been having and I guess when I did this, it turned on the clone thing again.

I design and develop electronics hardware for a living and there is one thing I've learned fromt it : regardless of how complex or contrived a problem is, the cause will always be something very simple.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys - none of it actually fixed my problem, but I know a lot more than I did at the start and my PC is faster than ever now!

Iain