Slow performance of XP node

[Rajiv K Khandelwal]

I am running my Windows XP SP 3 Professional as a node on SBS 2003. It has
960 MB RAM. Lately it has become awfully slow. I run scan disk and disk
defragmenter regularly but that has not improved the performance. Task
Manager shows 80-85% of System Idle Time.

Kindly suggest what should I do to improve as some programmes which used to
open in 5-10 seconds now take as much as 1-2 minutes to open.

Thanking you in anticipation,

Rajiv K. Khandelwal

 

[1PW]

I am running my Windows XP SP 3 Professional as a node on SBS 2003. It has
960 MB RAM. Lately it has become awfully slow. I run scan disk and disk
defragmenter regularly but that has not improved the performance. Task
Manager shows 80-85% of System Idle Time.

Kindly suggest what should I do to improve as some programmes which used to
open in 5-10 seconds now take as much as 1-2 minutes to open.

Thanking you in anticipation,

Rajiv K. Khandelwal

Hello Rajiv:

Try looking for a malware infestation:

Update and run your antivirus protection, then:

Run the freeware versions of MBAM and SAS.

Download, install, *update* and then execute.

<http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam-download.php>
<http://www.superantispyware.com/>

If anything, other than cookies, is found please cut/paste the report
into an update to this thread.

Best wishes,

Pete

 

[Rajiv K Khandelwal]

Thank you Pete for your advice. The two programmes were run and only 15
Adware Tracking Cookies were found.

I tried some tweaking and observed that 1.3 GB of PF Usage was there. When
some start up programmes were removed from the Startup on MSCONFIG, this
usage came down to about 650 MB. However, the start up programmes are
required at some time of the day.

Kindly advise.

Rajiv K. Khandelwal