There's a jar of molasses in my machine

[N Miller]

For some time now my system has been getting slower. It now takes as
much as 10-15 seconds to get my mail utility (Mozilla) up and IE takes
even longer. Rebooting takes about 5 minutes. I've tried various
remedies, including uninstalling some of my most needed apps, such as
Word and Photoshop. That helped some, but I can't work without them. I
also note that when I uninstall McAfee and Zone Alarm, things pick up,
but I don't want a vulnerable machine. The techs at Dell have suggested
various things, most recently uninstalling SP2 and "waiting a few days
for things to settle down". So far, things are worse than ever.

Any solution other than reinstalling XP?

nm

 

[Paul Heslop]

For some time now my system has been getting slower. It now takes as
much as 10-15 seconds to get my mail utility (Mozilla) up and IE takes
even longer. Rebooting takes about 5 minutes. I've tried various
remedies, including uninstalling some of my most needed apps, such as
Word and Photoshop. That helped some, but I can't work without them. I
also note that when I uninstall McAfee and Zone Alarm, things pick up,
but I don't want a vulnerable machine. The techs at Dell have suggested
various things, most recently uninstalling SP2 and "waiting a few days
for things to settle down". So far, things are worse than ever.

Any solution other than reinstalling XP?

nm

have you run a trojan scanner? You may be infected with trojans etc
which some virus progs don't spot. google for SpybotS&D and Adaware
and give them both a run.

 

[Guest]

I agree with Paul...running Ad-Aware and Spybot will likely do the trick. I
had the same problems with XP Pro and once I ran those, the PC is back to
normal. Now, I run them nearly every day just to clean out all the tracking
cookies and garbage like that.

Jason

 

[N Miller]

Thanks for the suggestion. Spybot did indeed find and flush a number of
spy progs that I didn't know I had. Unfortunately, the glacial pace of
things is unchanged. It still takes me about 5 minutes to boot and
Mozilla (which pops up right away on my xp laptop) takes 15 seconds or more.

nm

 

[Rock]

For some time now my system has been getting slower. It now takes as
much as 10-15 seconds to get my mail utility (Mozilla) up and IE takes
even longer. Rebooting takes about 5 minutes. I've tried various
remedies, including uninstalling some of my most needed apps, such as
Word and Photoshop. That helped some, but I can't work without them. I
also note that when I uninstall McAfee and Zone Alarm, things pick up,
but I don't want a vulnerable machine. The techs at Dell have suggested
various things, most recently uninstalling SP2 and "waiting a few days
for things to settle down". So far, things are worse than ever.

Any solution other than reinstalling XP?

nm

http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm

 

[Bill James]

How long has it been since you did a defrag? That's should be one of the first steps for a slow computer.

--

Bill James
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User

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