Slower PC!

[Ivesy]

I have a P4 2.6 Scaleo 600 with 512MB memory, 80Gig hard drive running Win XP.
Does anyone know why when I run something like Norton Virus checker and say try to connect to AOL at the same time does it seem to much for my PC? The PC seems to go into slow mo as it tries to connect to the web. I've noticed when I run say Nero and open a program called Fellows labeling kit that the system again slows down. I've only had the PC since September'03. I run Disk Defrag, I keep an I on things with Norton and I regulary update the drivers. I've read somewhere that theres a program that comes with the drivers for my HP printer that can slows the system down and that if you remove it things speed up again but I can't remember where I read it! Grrrrrr!!! I did have that worm virus but that was removed by Norton so just to make sure I used the recovery disk and re-installed XP. This happpened early on when I got the PC so it's difficult to tell if I had the problem before I re-installed or not! Any ideas would greatly appreciated!

 

[Ian]

When you say it runs slow, what is it that happens slow? Does it just seem unresponsive?

You quite probably have too many things loaded up on startup, or have some spyware on your PC.

Try running the program "msconfig" from the start menu (then click run), and if you tell us which programs are ticked under the startup tab.

 

[Ivesy]

Thanks for the quick reply! There's a delay which can quite a few seconds between clicking on an icon (any) and anything actually happening. I don't really have much on the PC running in the back ground. I've checked for Spyware and found nothing. I've ran msconfig which had a lot of things running I've deselected everything except the Mcaffe firewall and Norton Virus checker. I'm actually checking my PC mags right now because I read an article that said a program that is used by HP in the installation process can on some systems slow it down. It also says it can be deleted without any harm to the printer. What frustrates me is my previous PC (a P2 400) which didn't have 'hyper threading' etc seemed to work fine when you ran more than one application at once!

 

[Ivesy]

ANother thing! I don't know if this helps. Whne I check the Task Manager I find I have 31 processes running! could this be the cause? if so what can I do? They seem to be connected to things like , Norton, Mcaffee, Kodak, AOL (which as memory useage of 46,172k).

 

[Ian]

31 is a large amount indeed! I have 24 when running a few things at once. Do you have 2 anti virus checkers installed?

 

[Ivesy]

I only have Norton as my virus checker and Mcaffee as my firewall (this was free with AOL). I found that program that comes with the HP installation (eventually) it's called hpzipm12.exe. I've deleted it and shall see what happens next. If 31 processes seems excessive is there anyway I can disable any of them? Just looking now at them I have one process which is listed 5 times called svghost.exe. Thanks again for the reply

 

[kalbal]

lol...i have 33 running on my p4,3ghz With h/t
lol

better get rid of some stuff lol

 

[Techy]

:crazy:

 

[Diabolicboy]

dude! I had 2 instances of svghost.exe running, it's some sort of backdoor prog... check your hidden files in windows directory. My file was named "kernell" and had 200 files of different names. but looking at the properties of them they all had the same info. and they were ALL applications (the same app)

I tried to delete the file then 5 minutes later it would come back. It did this EVERY time I tried to delete it. It was full of porn cracks, game cracks, etc etc (or so the file names implied).

Then I ran a search for apps on my puter and found 2 stray apps (with different names but the same app info) in the windows dir. one I could not delete (it says it was being run by windows) and the other I could.

so i then again... deleted the hidden file (with all the apps in it) the one stray app, ran the task manager, found the svghost, ended the task, then I could delete the app that I could previously not delete and emptied the recycle bin (done very quickly before it coud build the hidden file... agan). And that seemed to have gotten rid of it.

I have no idea what the app was trying to do, but my puter had been running funny till I got rid of all that crap.

Hope that helps
Diabolicboy