Slow performance

[Steve]

My dell laptop over the past 6 months has been running slow. Start-up is
slow, opening IE7, or office programs also takes time (30 seconds or more for
word or excel). I have Mcafee and Spybot loaded which are run at least once a
week. Neither have ever report anything more than a minor tracking cookie. I
have tried all the commonly advised tricks, clean up, defrag etc but nothing.
No new programs have been added and most additional software like Photoshop
has been running since the computer was new. I have a separate portable hard
drive for photos etc so the computer drive is 33.6 GB with 20.3 used and 13.3
GB free.

XP service Pack 3
Pentium 4 2.8 GHz
1 GB ram
Office 2007

Windows Task manager
CPU usage is normally in 10% and under range
PF usage around 532mb

Physical Memory
Total 1047904
Available 461856
System Cache 489220

Commit Charge

Total 519148
Limit 2523512
Peak 673184

Kernel Memory

Total 51500
Paged 37944
Non Paged 13556

 

[Olórin]

My dell laptop over the past 6 months has been running slow. Start-up is
slow, opening IE7, or office programs also takes time (30 seconds or more
for
word or excel). I have Mcafee and Spybot loaded which are run at least
once a
week. Neither have ever report anything more than a minor tracking cookie.
I
have tried all the commonly advised tricks, clean up, defrag etc but
nothing.
No new programs have been added and most additional software like
Photoshop
has been running since the computer was new. I have a separate portable
hard
drive for photos etc so the computer drive is 33.6 GB with 20.3 used and
13.3
GB free.

XP service Pack 3
Pentium 4 2.8 GHz
1 GB ram
Office 2007

Windows Task manager
CPU usage is normally in 10% and under range
PF usage around 532mb

Physical Memory
Total 1047904
Available 461856
System Cache 489220

Commit Charge

Total 519148
Limit 2523512
Peak 673184

Kernel Memory

Total 51500
Paged 37944
Non Paged 13556

What does "etc" cover in "have tried all the commonly advised tricks, clean
up, defrag etc"? At the risk of outlining steps you've already taken but not
mentioned:-

Anything hogging memory in Task Manager when opening these apps?

Check what's starting up with the system with Mike Lin's Startup Control
Panel (http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml), temporarily disabling &
re-testing.

Check your hard disks aren't running in PIO mode:

Start > Run > devmgmt.msc; expand IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers > double-click
Primary IDE Channel. In Advanced Settings tab, check "current transfer mode"
is DMA, not PIO. Ditto on other channels, as appropriate.

While you're in Device Manager, check for any yellow question marks or
exclamation marks.

Try out a couple of other antimalware tools as well as just Spybot - I
suggest Malwarebytes & SuperAntiSpyware.

Do things pick up if you run with your external HDD disconnected?

Try disabling McAfee as much as you can (in start-up areas and services),
see if things speed up. One machine I looked at was brought to its knees by
McAfee's spam monitoring component running riot.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

My dell laptop over the past 6 months has been running slow. Start-up is
slow, opening IE7, or office programs also takes time (30 seconds or more for
word or excel). I have Mcafee and Spybot loaded which are run at least once a
week. Neither have ever report anything more than a minor tracking cookie. I
have tried all the commonly advised tricks, clean up, defrag etc but nothing.
No new programs have been added and most additional software like Photoshop
has been running since the computer was new. I have a separate portable hard
drive for photos etc so the computer drive is 33.6 GB with 20.3 used and 13.3
GB free.

If the computer has gotten slower than it was, and you claim that you
haven't done anything to it, very likely the reason is that you are
infected with malware.

You say you run McAfee and Spybot (I assume you mean Spybot Search and
Destroy), so you may think you are free of malware, but let me point
out three things:

1. McAfee is next to the worst anti-virus program available; only
Norton is worse. The best is NOD32, but if you want a free one, I
recommend Avast. Avast isn't quite as good as NOD32, but it's
considerably better than almost anything else.

2. Spybot Search and destroy isn't useless, but it's far from the best
anti-spyware program available, The best is MalwareBytes Anti-Malware.

3. No single anti-spyware program is anywhere near perfect, and good
protection is achieved only by running at least two or three. I would
add SuperAntiSpyware to what you run.

I recommend that you go to MVP Malke's Malware Removal site at
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware and
follow the instructions there.

 

[Daave]

My dell laptop over the past 6 months has been running slow. Start-up
is
slow, opening IE7, or office programs also takes time (30 seconds or
more for
word or excel). I have Mcafee and Spybot loaded which are run at least
once a
week. Neither have ever report anything more than a minor tracking
cookie. I
have tried all the commonly advised tricks, clean up, defrag etc but
nothing.
No new programs have been added and most additional software like
Photoshop
has been running since the computer was new. I have a separate
portable hard
drive for photos etc so the computer drive is 33.6 GB with 20.3 used
and 13.3
GB free.

XP service Pack 3
Pentium 4 2.8 GHz
1 GB ram
Office 2007

Windows Task manager
CPU usage is normally in 10% and under range
PF usage around 532mb

Physical Memory
Total 1047904
Available 461856
System Cache 489220

Commit Charge

Total 519148
Limit 2523512
Peak 673184

Kernel Memory

Total 51500
Paged 37944
Non Paged 13556

You seem to have lots of RAM. That's good because that means you are not
relying on the pagefile. McAfee can sometimes bog a system down, but it
doesn't sound like that's happening in your case.

Assuming you are malware-free (and this needs to be confirmed!), you
might be experiencing the same thing that happened to my boss recently.
He has a Dell Latitude D610 laptop. It had become excruciatingly slow.
Two things happened. First, an optional software update from Windows
Update conflicted with one of his programs, resulting in excessive CPU
usage. (Also, there have been cases where a critical update conflicted
with third-party programs such as ZoneAlarm firewall.) Second, this
situation caused the hard drive transfer mode to shift to the very slow
PIO mode.

I would uninstall updates in bunches, perhaps needing to go back as long
as six months. My hunch is one of those updates caused your problem,
too. (Then again, it *is* a hunch!) If I'm right, you will notice that
the excessive CPU activity will cease. At this point, address the
transfer mode if necessary. See:

http://winhlp.com/node/10

In the future, just download and install the critical Windows updates.
And *never* download drivers from Microsoft!

 

[Ritter 197]

WHy "never" drivers from MS????

In Windows XP, VISTA and now in Windows 7 there are MANY drivers installed
from MS.

 

[Gerry]

Steve

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.

--



Hope this helps.

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

 

[Steve]

Thanks for all the feed back, I will try to answer all the points you have
all raised
1. Tried all the commonly adivced trick – clean-up, defrag, malware check,
check to make sure DMA is running, deleated all history caches, made sure
hard is not over full, look at what is in startup.
2. External hard drive makes no difference on performance either connected
or not.
3. Have checked for viruses and malware using McAfee, Spybot search and
destroy and Ad-aware (now uninstalled).
4. Have checked to make sure there are no yellow or red markers in the
device manager
5. Event Log
Event Type: Error
Event Source: DCOM
Event Category: None
Event ID: 10010
Date: 07/02/2009
Time: 08:11:22
User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
Computer:
Description:
The server {C7E39D60-7A9F-42BF-ABB1-03DC0FA4F493} did not register with DCOM
within the required timeout.
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7011
Date: 07/02/2009
Time: 08:11:21
User: N/A
Computer:
Description:
Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for a transaction response from the
mcmscsvc service.
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Windows Search Service
Event Category: Gatherer
Event ID: 3042
Date: 04/02/2009
Time: 08:35:28
User: N/A
Computer:
Description:
The index was paused.

Context: Application, SystemIndex Catalog
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Windows Search Service
Event Category: Gatherer
Event ID: 3024
Date: 03/02/2009
Time: 08:37:19
User: N/A
Computer:
Description:
The update cannot be started because the content sources cannot be accessed.
Fix the errors and try the update again.

Context: Application, SystemIndex Catalog

 

[Daave]

I am referring to specific drivers for specific types of hardware like
sound cards, graphics cards, network cards, etc. You should never get
these from Microsoft. You should always get them directly from the
manufacturers' Web sites.