upgrade XP Home to XP Prof

[Peter]

Thank you very much Gary

I am afraid that I immunized with Spybot. Should I undo that, somehow?

Also, Spybot Search & Destroy, but DO NOT enable SD Helper of TeaTimer, and
don't Immunize. Just use it as an on-demand scanner that you run whenever
you do the rest of your maintenance.

Thank you

JB

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

I would. IMO, the list is excessive and while I can't explain why, I've
regularly had users report problems that we eventually "solved" by undoing
Immunization. Others, I'm sure, may have more to say on the topic. I've
found that SpywareBlaster is enough (which uses a similar methodology of
adding sites to the Restricted Zone but doesn't go any farther than that.)

 

[Big_Al]

I followed Techsupportforum 5-step suggestions to the letter: which included
Panda Then, Mcafee, Kaspersky, Trend, Spybot, Ad.aware, all in safe mode.

I have pruned, through Msconfig Startup and services tab, down to the
minimum which includes most MS services and McAfee. On startup I have
wkfud, Rundll32 cwaprops, TPtray, Mcagent, CePMTray, CeEKey, Apoint, Ctfmon,
Wkdetect

It has been slow for some time, It does not hang (not often anyway)

I suspect low RAM, McAfee and especially Adobe Reader holding onto memory,
and the need for an updated Video driver which I cant find anywhere:

manufacturer : ATI
type : MOBILITYT RADEONT
memory : 16 MB
memory type : DDR Video RAM
graphics accelerator : 64 bit
connected bus : AGP bus


Thank you very much

JB

You answered some. If you don't want to answer them all, I can't help.




Sorry, no. I don't publish my E-mail address here. Besides, I'm not a
Hijackthis expert.

If you suspect Adobe you can try removing it and installing PDF Exchange
Viewer the Free Version. The 7th on the product list.
http://www.pdfxviewer.com/
I find it displays PDF files as well as Adobe and is a bit faster. I've
dropped Adobe on my laptop. I tried several other programs but I had a
complex PDF that none seemed to reproduce properly until I found this one.

This can help but I agree with others that your memory is in dire need
of help.

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

You need better info on that display adapter. Where are you getting that
info from? You might want to try Everest 2.02
http://www.majorgeeks.com/mst_Defrag_Home_Edition_d4571.html

See if it doesn't give you some numbers to go along with MOBILITYT RADEONT.
There are a few different ones.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS-MVP Shell/User
http://grystmill.com

I followed Techsupportforum 5-step suggestions to the letter: which
included Panda Then, Mcafee, Kaspersky, Trend, Spybot, Ad.aware, all in
safe mode.

I have pruned, through Msconfig Startup and services tab, down to the
minimum which includes most MS services and McAfee. On startup I have
wkfud, Rundll32 cwaprops, TPtray, Mcagent, CePMTray, CeEKey, Apoint,
Ctfmon, Wkdetect

It has been slow for some time, It does not hang (not often anyway)

I suspect low RAM, McAfee and especially Adobe Reader holding onto memory,
and the need for an updated Video driver which I cant find anywhere:

manufacturer : ATI
type : MOBILITYT RADEONT
memory : 16 MB
memory type : DDR Video RAM
graphics accelerator : 64 bit
connected bus : AGP bus


Thank you very much

JB

 

[Daave]

I have pruned, through Msconfig Startup and services tab, down to the
minimum which includes most MS services and McAfee.

If you still haven't uninstalled McAfee, you haven't pruned nearly
enough!

And since McAfee tends to keep its hooks in the OS (like Norton), you
will need to run the special removal tool (MCPR.exe):

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=107083&lc=1033

Replace with something much lighter like Avast. Free version available:

http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

Choose the cutom installation because email scanning (Internet Mail and
Outlook/Exchange) is redundant and resource-consuming.

Get more RAM. It's cheap these days, and it will dramatically lessen
your dependence on the pagefile. Assuming you are truly malware-free,
this will be your biggest bang for the buck; 256 MB of RAM is woefully
inadequate! It will be about $60 for 1 GB of RAM. Go to a reputable site
like http://www.crucial.com/ and use one of their tools to determine
exactly what you need. If I plugged in the right values, you will want
two of these modules:

http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=19763F75A5CA7304

512MB, 200-pin SODIMM, DDR PC2700 memory module
CT526407

 

[Peter]

Thanks gary
º
In fact, I have just received a reply from AMD re the Mobility Radeon driver
but I can't understand it. Does it make sense to you?

Here it goes: Ran Alert AR - Laptop / Notebook support

What does AR mean?

JB

You need better info on that display adapter. Where are you getting that
info from? You might want to try Everest 2.02
http://www.majorgeeks.com/mst_Defrag_Home_Edition_d4571.html

See if it doesn't give you some numbers to go along with MOBILITYT
RADEONT. There are a few different ones.

 

[Peter]

Many thanks

I did a couple of things last night and the computer is running FASTER! I
got rid of McAfee and Adobe Reader 8.. Instead I got Avast and Adobe Reader
6.

Next, I need to sort out my drivers and, yes, get more memory.

thank you very much for your advice.

JB

 

[Peter]

In fact, I have just realized that AMD/ATI do not support drivers for
laptops are apparently modifies by the laptop constructors. Then, Toshiba
don't mention drivers for this model in their page anymore. So, what do I
do next?

Sorry about going on and on...


JB

You need better info on that display adapter. Where are you getting that
info from? You might want to try Everest 2.02
http://www.majorgeeks.com/mst_Defrag_Home_Edition_d4571.html

See if it doesn't give you some numbers to go along with MOBILITYT
RADEONT. There are a few different ones.

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

No idea. Doesn't look like something for public consumption. You may have
gotten an internal memo by mistake. My guess is that it documents escalating
it to the Laptop/Notebook department, AR being some internal code for level
of the Alert that sent to Laptop/Notebook.

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

You search and search and search until you give up, basically. Or you ask
and ask all over the Usenet and those posts get repeated by all the NG
repeater websites out there (99% of whom are whores) and those sites end up
being the hits you get when you search for it again. I dunno, I haven't
figured out any general solution to the problem of not finding drivers.

What makes you think you need an updated driver for the video, anyway? None
of the symptoms you've listed fall under the heading of video problems.

 

[Daave]

You're welcome. Depending on how you use your computer (e.g., light Web
browsing and e-mail), you might even find that 256MB is enough RAM most
of the time -- now that you aren't using memory-hungry programs! Still,
since memory is so cheap you might as well go to the max, which for your
PC is 1 GB, I believe. And if you ever need to use the RAM -- for image
or video editing, etc., your PC should still be smooth and fast since it
isn't using the page file anymore.

Make sure you regularly clean out your Temporary Internet Files. And
keep this link for future reference:

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

Good luck and thanks for posting back!

 

[Bill in Co.]

You're welcome. Depending on how you use your computer (e.g., light Web
browsing and e-mail), you might even find that 256MB is enough RAM most
of the time -- now that you aren't using memory-hungry programs! Still,
since memory is so cheap you might as well go to the max, which for your
PC is 1 GB, I believe. And if you ever need to use the RAM -- for image
or video editing, etc., your PC should still be smooth and fast since it
isn't using the page file anymore.

Make sure you regularly clean out your Temporary Internet Files. And
keep this link for future reference:

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

Good luck and thanks for posting back!

Unless he is on dialup (like me), in which case every time you do that, it
takes forever to reload the pages back in, again.

(still, I do it on occasion as part of good housekeeping, due to some
inevitable TIF index.dat corruption that eventually occurs over time (with
some occasional IE page crashes, or hangs, etc)

 

[Peter]

Thanks Gary

I occasionally (seldom) get an error in Event Viewer regarding Ati2dvag
which is the video driver, and more often Error (1) Aspiec which seems to be
related to the driver also.

JB

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

Just because an error is indicated in such & such a place does not mean
that's where the problem is, only that that's where the chain of procedures
finally ran into something that said, NO! Video is a common place for errors
originating from elsewhere to hit the wall and become visible to the user.

Mentions of errors in logs is nothing to worry about, unless you know
exactly what the error means. I don't think you do know what the errors
mean, and we'd need the Details of the errors in order to even begin to
guess the problem.

I don't think you have any problems at all with video, nor do I think you
have any problems with ASPIEC, which is NOT a video component but rather
pertains to CD drives. Your errors are more like reports from somewhere near
the end of an assembly line when an obviously mangled part shows up and the
person running the machine says, "I can't use this", but has no idea how it
got to be in that condition, only knows to write down that an error
occurred, and *maybe* something about the nature of the error. "Error --
mangled part -- cannot continue until mangled part is removed", at which
point the mangled part is removed and our portion of the assembly line
continues working just fine.

 

[Peter]

Thanks for putting my mind at rest.

JB

Just because an error is indicated in such & such a place does not mean
that's where the problem is, only that that's where the chain of
procedures finally ran into something that said, NO! Video is a common
place for errors originating from elsewhere to hit the wall and become
visible to the user.

Mentions of errors in logs is nothing to worry about, unless you know
exactly what the error means. I don't think you do know what the errors
mean, and we'd need the Details of the errors in order to even begin to
guess the problem.

I don't think you have any problems at all with video, nor do I think you
have any problems with ASPIEC, which is NOT a video component but rather
pertains to CD drives. Your errors are more like reports from somewhere
near the end of an assembly line when an obviously mangled part shows up
and the person running the machine says, "I can't use this", but has no
idea how it got to be in that condition, only knows to write down that an
error occurred, and *maybe* something about the nature of the error.
"Error -- mangled part -- cannot continue until mangled part is removed",
at which point the mangled part is removed and our portion of the assembly
line continues working just fine.