XP Home becoming VERY sluggish

[Guest]

Greetings all

I've noticed in the last 3 weeks or so that my computer is VERY slow to
start programs after a fresh boot (I turn it off every night). For example,
it can take up to one full minute for it to load something as simiple as
"calculator" or "task manager", or "Outlook Express". The hard drive light
just goes on, but there is very little hard drive activity - I just sit and
wait. Once a program finally comes up, it will start quickly (just like it
should) from there on in for the rest of the day, it only seems to be the
first launch of any program that is very slow. All programs used to start
instantly up until a few weeks ago. I have not installed or un-installed
anything in the last month or so. I've also tried darn near every error
checking utility out there, and de-fragged, ad-awared, spyware checked, virus
scanned, etc etc etc the heck out of this thing - I even tried Maxtor's hard
drive utility, and several memory testers to check my 1Gb of RAM. Everything
comes back free of any error, virus, spyware, adware, or problems at all.
This install is only about 6 months old, I do not install/un-install many
programs, so it really shouldn't be polluted. The temp files, browser cache
are cleaned out on a very regular basis (as they always have been). I have
XP Home, system is P4 3.0 Mhz, 1 gig ram (Kingston), 256 Mb ATI video card,
60 MB Maxtor hard drive, Norton AV has been installed since my last re-format
6 months ago. I have tried all the procedures I could find on the 'net
(limiting startup programs, background processes etc), virus scanning, adware
and spyware scanning, checking registry for errors, etc. - everything comes
back OK. I did kill a few small startup processes that weren't required, but
that had NO effect on anything. It only seems to be the first launch of
almost any program, after that it will load and start quickly and normally.
It is very frustrating to wait up to a minute to get something as small as
calculator to come up, and this is a real pain when trying to check email and
such. Any helpful insight would be most appreciated.

Thanks in advance,


Bert

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Greetings all

I've noticed in the last 3 weeks or so that my computer is VERY
slow to start programs after a fresh boot (I turn it off every
night). For example, it can take up to one full minute for it to
load something as simiple as "calculator" or "task manager", or
"Outlook Express". The hard drive light just goes on, but there is
very little hard drive activity - I just sit and wait. Once a
program finally comes up, it will start quickly (just like it
should) from there on in for the rest of the day, it only seems to
be the first launch of any program that is very slow. All programs
used to start instantly up until a few weeks ago. I have not
installed or un-installed anything in the last month or so. I've
also tried darn near every error checking utility out there, and
de-fragged, ad-awared, spyware checked, virus scanned, etc etc etc
the heck out of this thing - I even tried Maxtor's hard drive
utility, and several memory testers to check my 1Gb of RAM.
Everything comes back free of any error, virus, spyware, adware, or
problems at all. This install is only about 6 months old, I do not
install/un-install many programs, so it really shouldn't be
polluted. The temp files, browser cache are cleaned out on a very
regular basis (as they always have been). I have XP Home, system
is P4 3.0 Mhz, 1 gig ram (Kingston), 256 Mb ATI video card, 60 MB
Maxtor hard drive, Norton AV has been installed since my last
re-format 6 months ago. I have tried all the procedures I could
find on the 'net (limiting startup programs, background processes
etc), virus scanning, adware and spyware scanning, checking
registry for errors, etc. - everything comes back OK. I did kill a
few small startup processes that weren't required, but that had NO
effect on anything. It only seems to be the first launch of almost
any program, after that it will load and start quickly and
normally. It is very frustrating to wait up to a minute to get
something as small as calculator to come up, and this is a real
pain when trying to check email and such. Any helpful insight
would be most appreciated.

How's the machine running? You reformatted 6 months ago - how did it run at
first?

The only things that cause progressive slowness like you describe (AFAIK) is
the collection of junk that runs in the background, bad hardware or you have
the incorrect driver for something. Your motherboard may be bad, your hard
drive could be bad (but doubtful if you use the manufacturers full test),
your memory could still be bad or in a bad slot on the motherboard, your
power supply could be going out.. or you have junk that runs all the time
taking up memory and using processor.

To me - however - it sounds more likely like you have some incorrect driver
to me.. Something that was either defective when you installed it or got
corrupted or just wasn't meant for your hardware. Make sure you have the
latest hardware drivers and the latest BIOS (hardware) for the equipment you
run.


If you have done all that - then you shouldn't mind doing this.

1) Obtain the imaging application (Symantec Ghost, Acronis TrueImage,
BootItT NG, etc) of your choice (and a place to write that image to - like
an external drive - another internal hard disk drive, network share, etc.)
2) Make an image of your entire system using the application and external
storage.
3) Collect together all the latest hardware drivers and such from the
manufacturer's web page for each of your critical components (chipset for
motherboard, video card, sound card, network card, modem if you have one,
etc.) Also download Windows XP SP 2 (IT Administrators package.) Write
those to an external media as well.
4) Install JUST Windows XP. Format the old drive completely. Make sure you
are not connected to the Internet in any way.
5) Once the installation is done - install all of the latest drivers
(hardware) you collected together in #2.
6) If the CD you installed with was not SP2 level - install the SP2
installation package you downloaded earlier.
7) Making sure the Windows Firewall is enabled, go to
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ and update all patches (except
hardware.)

You can always revert back to the image or get data off it should that work
for you.

 

[Guest]

Hi there:

Thanks for the speedy response. How's the machine running??? It seems OK,
programs (if they have been started once) will load up just as quick as ever
- it seems to only be very slow the first time I run a given program.

When I first formatted, the thing just flew - very quick and responsive on
everything, no excessive wait time for anything to load. When a program was
initiated, the hard drive would churn a bit, and presto - the application was
up and running in no time at all. Now when I initiate a program for the
first time after a re-boot or startup, the hard drive light comes on and
stays on full, but the drive does not churn. It's like something is taking
priority of my resources. As stated before, once a given program has been
run atleast once, it will start up lightning fast the next time, and from
there on after.

I have carefully been monitoring the running processes, nothing out of the
oridinary for the amount of processes running (35), with no real resouce hogs
either. No hardware or software changes have occurred for quite some time.
All drivers are up to date, and correct for the components. I could spend
hours upon hours chasing my tail here trying to solve this problem that just
started to occur about three weeks ago. I'm thinking the fastest and easiest
way to correct this is to re-format and to another clean install of Windows
XP. I've done several formats on several computers, it's no big deal to me,
just kinda time consuming. That might fix the problem, but it will still be
eating at me as to what has happened, and why. I'm the sort of person who
likes to figure things out.

One thing I noticed that struck me kind of odd - I had already run task
manager (to view system performance), and my Outlook Express once, and closed
them both - so they would both fire up almost instantly the second time. I
then tried to initiate something simple like "calculator" - the hard drive
light came on (no churning), and while I was waiting I was able to fire up
Outlook Express very quickly, and task manager (very quickly also) while
still waiting to "calculator" to pop up. While waiting for calculator to
come up, I thought the performance tab of task manager would show substantial
cpu usage - it stayed around 0-1% until the hard drive finally churned a bit,
and calculator finally came up....... that struck me as a bit odd. I was
expecting to see substantial cpu usage.

I don't know if it's related, but a few times when shutting down I did
notice that ".net broadcast" was giving me a message saying it is still
running, and gave me the "end now" option. I'm thinking that becuase the
shut down procedure was on its first usage since the last restart, that it
too was slow like all the other applications. I dunno. Anybody out there
had any problems with .net framework 2.0????

Any other ideas before I get on the re-format/re-install train???? Every
friggin' utility/test I can get my hands on for hardware, memory, registry,
etc shows that everything is just fine, and there are NO errors anywhere. If
you have any other ideas, please share - they would be most appreciated.
Thanks in advance for your time.


Regards,

Bert