Tyler said:
PC sluggish even after running Norton 360.
The problem with Norton 360 is that it never really stops running; it is
quite a resource hog and has been known to bring many a system to a
crawl.
Task Manager shows over
90% System Idle Process
In mine, the figure for System Idle Process (which is not really a
process, anyway) is 99% (when relatively idle, of course). The higher
the better. That means (if accurate) that all other processes *combined*
total 1% of CPU usage. For those who want to stress test their CPUs,
there is a good program called Prime 95, which will use about 99% of the
CPU. Surprisingly, you may still perform other tasks without necessarily
noticing any hit in performance. Norton's software is problematic; you
really should ditch it.
AND %CPU Usage at bottom of dialog at 50% at
the same time! I believe the %CPU number because other applications
send it to 100% and everything crawls, (and %Idle still showing
80-90% Idle!) No other processes listed in Task Manager consuming
over 1-2%, perfmon shows same stats.
Like I said, you could run a program like Prime 95 to intentionally
"send it to 100%" but you still might not notice any difference in
performance. You need to identify poorly written programs and totally
uninstall them.
Physically disconnect from the Internet and configure a Clean Boot:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353
How is your performance now? Open Task Manager. What do you see?
Gradually bring back certain programs until you find out which one(s)
is/are the resource hog(s).
Instead of Task Manager, you could always use Process Explorer, which is
far more detailed:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
Assuming you decide to uninstall Norton, you might wind up needing to
use their special removal tool:
http://service1.symantec.com/Support/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039
Decent and free alternatives are AVG, Avast, and Avira Antivir. You
should also run other antimalware programs. Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
and SUPERAntiSpyware are both very good (and there are free versions
available).
Standard boilerplate follows:
Here are the typical causes of sluggishness:
1. Malicious software (malware). You need to rule this out first! This
page has excellent information:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Viruses_Malware
2. Certain programs that are designed to combat malware (e.g., Norton
and McAfee). Ironically, they can slow things down because they simply
use way too many resources. Sometime they cause conflicts with other
programs. And their default mode is to scan your entire hard drive each
time you boot up. Fortunately, there are other antimalware programs
available that use far fewer resources (e.g., NOD32, Avast, and Avira).
3. Too many of certain types of programs always running in the
background -- with or without your knowledge.
Use these sites to determine what these programs are and to learn how to
configure them not to always run at startup:
http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php#THE_PROGRAMS
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm
Sometimes it is recommended to use msconfig to configure the programs to
not run at startup. A better, more thorough program is Autoruns:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx
But before you do this, you should use the preference settings of the
program in question. Otherwise, for some programs, they will return to
the startup list anyway!
4. Not enough RAM, which causes the PC to overly rely on the pagefile. A
quick way to determine if this is happening is to open Task Manager
(Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then note the three values
under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit,
and Peak.
The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value of
Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM.
In case you want to explore this further, you may run Page File Monitor
for Windows XP:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm
5. You might also want to check that your hard drive's access mode
didn't change from DMA to PIO:
http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/is-your-hard-disk-cddvd-drives-too-slow-while-copying/
and
http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/itserviceduck/udma_fix/