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Hello,
I have a Dell Latitude D620 running Win XP Pro SP2.
You really should consider upgrading to SP3 soon.
How much RAM do you have?
How large is your hard drive and how much free space do you have on
there?
For some time
now, it's been doing some strange things:
1.) "My Computer" takes 3 - 4 minutes to open - the searchlight scans
in a blank window. Once open, all drives are available and
accessable.
Is this *every time* you open My Computer? Or only when you first boot
up?
Does it take just as long to open if you are running in Safe Mode?
What programs do you have running automatically at startup? The reason I
am asking is that certain ones tend to hog your resources for several
minutes (updating and scanning) before settling down.
2.) The status of the Task Scheduler service is stuck at
"Starting" (the Startup Type is Automatic) and none of the scheduled
tasks run.
That's not good!
3.) All attempts to install any MS Update fail - whether from the MS
Update site or manually.
Nor is that!
My antivirus/antispyware apps are up to date and they find nothing
wrong - even when manual scans are run.
Malware is *always* a possibility. It is quite possible that these
as-of-yet-unindentified antivirus/antimalware programs are unable to
detect/remove the offending malware you might have. Sometimes you need
to boot into a non-Windows environment (e.g., boot off a live Linux CD)
and scan for malware that way. This page has a lot of helpful
information:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Viruses_Malware
System Restore had no effect
when the issue first appeared (it's been long enough now that all
current restore points would be useless). I have uninstalled every
app I can live without and have run CCleaner several times. I really
don't want to reinstall XP, so if anyone can offer a less drastic
solution it would be much appriciated.
Malware needs to be ruled out.
Once this is done, you need to address the other possible causes of
sluggishness:
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/