win 2000 goes slow for no apparent reason

[SteveC]

I have been using win 2000 for many months with no
problems. All of a sudden it appears to lock up and
freeze, however it is very intermittent and can work fine
for an hour or so, then it slows to a craaawl.

If I leave it long enough (e.g. 15 mins) it carries out
the what it is supposed to do, so it hasn't actually
locked up, just gone slow.

It makes no difference whether the request is local or
over the network.

In Task Manager the CPU is hardly being used 0 - 4%.

Any ideas what it can be or how to identify the problem?

 

[Dan Seur]

One thought: If there are no visible problem footprints (Event Viewer,
Task Mgr/Apps or Processes, logs) this might be intermittent drive
failures. (Sure sign of impending disaster.) Controller/drive hardware
can execute access retries for a very long time, with some high-priority
process waiting and everything else stopped; this sort of thing can be
invisible to the OS.

Download a diagnostic utility from the manufacturer(s) of the drive(s)
in your box; that might pinpoint the problem. Also check all connectors
and cables; PCs vibrate a bit and things can get loosened. Or just go bad.

 

[Georges]

When it happened to me, it turned out to be virus infection.

 

[GeorgeL]

It happened to me too. All of a sudden, Windows 2000
started going extremely sloooow.
I managed to update the Norton anti-virus software's virus
definition and run the virus scan. It found nothing though.
What virus software did you use to defect and fix the
virus?