XP Running S-L-O-W

[Pinger]

Hi-
I did a new hard drive install after a crash last week....reloaded XP
Home....did restores....and have been tweaking this machine ever since.
Issue #1: Yesterday, suddenly the machine began to run very slow,
specifically opening some programs and files. I did several Windows updates
yesterday, and sometime after that, the issue surfaced. I tried to do a
System Restore and after restart was notifed that the restore did not "take"
and that nothing had been changed. I went to an earlier date and had the
same results. I have the minimum programs running at Windows startup, so
that's not the issue. Issue #2: I've had a couple of my desktop icons
disappear and when I went to the directory to create a new shortcut the
..exe. file was not there. Had to reload the program. Issue #3:
Periodically my monitor screen goes black for a second or
so....recovers.....then repeats itself.....then recovers. Running SP Home,
SP2, 512MB Ram.

Am running Norton 360 which finds no issues; AVG Anti Spyware, also.

Thanks. pinger

 

[db ´¯`·.. >]

well, if after the new
install nothing went wrong,
then it is obviously not
an issue caused by windows.

and though you say that there
is a minimal startup, it doesn't
mean that some process didn't
startup covertly.

further, we have no way of
knowing exactly what you
have been tweaking and maybe
you tweaked something that
was not beneficial to your
computer.

however, the above eludes to
issues involving software. perhaps
you may have an issue with faulty
hardware.

what you can try is booting
into safemode and running
windows and evaluate the
functionality of your system.

if you are incurring the
same difficulties as in
regular mode then is a clue.

also, you can then try booting in
safemode with networking and
log onto the internet and see
if your modem or internet connection
is stalling your system. as a
word of caution, i would limit
my internet analysis to safe
websites like microsoft.com
or msn or hotmail while in
safemode.

 

[Bob I]

The answer is likely that the hard drive access has fallen back to PIO
mode instead of DMA due to read error. Device manager, IDE controller,
Primary channel, Advanced settings. (uninstall, reinstall the Channel to
reset it)

 

[K7AAY]

Hi-
I did a new hard drive install after a crash last week....reloaded XP
Home....did restores....and have been tweaking this machine ever since.
Issue #1: Yesterday, suddenly the machine began to run very slow,
specifically opening some programs and files. I did several Windows updates
yesterday, and sometime after that, the issue surfaced. I tried to do a
System Restore and after restart was notifed that the restore did not "take"
and that nothing had been changed. I went to an earlier date and had the
same results. I have the minimum programs running at Windows startup, so
that's not the issue. Issue #2: I've had a couple of my desktop icons
disappear and when I went to the directory to create a new shortcut the
.exe. file was not there. Had to reload the program. Issue #3:
Periodically my monitor screen goes black for a second or
so....recovers.....then repeats itself.....then recovers. Running SP Home,
SP2, 512MB Ram.

Am running Norton 360 which finds no issues; AVG Anti Spyware, also.

Thanks. pinger

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx allows
a free download from Microsoft of Process Explorer, which can show the
CPU load of every application, service and other process running and
what program a process belongs to, plus much more detailed information
if you drill down. A review of what's running could be very useful.

 

[Michel Merlin]

This message is just to make your thread found when searching for "slow", and to outline that this also happens to XP Home, so XP Pro is not the only one affected.

BTW my XP Pro laptop, that has been slowed down to nearly unusable for months, has been apparently totally cured on 21 Apr. I may report later (still not sure since reporting in MS NGs has become unfruitful lately...) on all the changes I made, the 1st n-1 with apparent success for 1-2 days, the last with apparently sticking success.

Versailles, Fri 25 Apr 2008 10:12:20 +0200


----- Parent Message (links are clickable) -----
From: Pinger <[email protected]>
Newsgroup: news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Message: Sent: Fri 14 Mar 2008 14:03:26 GMT (10:03:26 -0400)
Subject: XP Running S-L-O-W

Hi-
I did a new hard drive install after a crash last week....reloaded XP Home....did restores....and have been tweaking this machine ever since.
Issue #1: Yesterday, suddenly the machine began to run very slow, specifically opening some programs and files. I did several Windows updates yesterday, and sometime after that, the issue surfaced. I tried to do a System Restore and after restart was notifed that the restore did not "take" and that nothing had been changed. I went to an earlier date and had the same results. I have the minimum programs running at Windows startup, so that's not the issue. Issue #2: I've had a couple of my desktop icons disappear and when I went to the directory to create a new shortcut the .exe. file was not there. Had to reload the program. Issue #3:
Periodically my monitor screen goes black for a second or so....recovers.....then repeats itself.....then recovers. Running SP Home, SP2, 512MB Ram.

Am running Norton 360 which finds no issues; AVG Anti Spyware, also.

Thanks. pinger