PC slowed to a crawl

B

BlueSpud

Registered User
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Have an inspiron 2200 laptop with 512ram, 6 months old & hardly ever used. All of a sudden it slowed to a crawl. I have cleared off any rubbish i can find, defragged it and virus scanned it but its still cruel. Not too much s/w on it, office, skype, picasa & a few other odds & ends, nothing that isn't already on a few computers I have dealings with. Any suggestions.
 
If its slowed down dramatically, it must be running something!
If its say XP , go to the task manager and see what programs and percentage utilizations are going on to start. Is the had disk active? etc.
R
 
is a better task manager than Task Manager and should help identify what's hogging the CPU, disk, I/O etc.
 
So far I have tried the following:
1) Task manager.
2) Defrag
3) Visus scan, AVG Free 7.5, up to date
4) Process Explorer
5) Pc-de-crapifier

It still feels like driving the car with the handbrake on (not that I know what that felt like.....)

I will try CrapCleaner this evening
 
Since ive updated from IE6 to IE7 my laptop performance has slowed noticebly..I have a dell Latitude which runs windows xp professional,its now a few years old but was always reasonably quicky not sure if IE7 is the cause but just throwing it out there
 
BlueSpud said:
So far I have tried the following:
1) Task manager.
.....
4) Process Explorer
Click to expand...
Did either of these identify any programmes/processes which may be hogging up the processor or memory?
They don't solve anything in themselves, but they can help identify what the problem(s) could be.

[Possibly worth looking into utilities such as "Free Ram XP Pro" (clears the RAM at set times/RAM usage levels) or "SiSoftware Sandra" (free trial version available [broken link removed]) [helps identify some programmes taking up a lot of space - identified a download monitor using a lot of memory on mine and general system performance/problems].]
 
I would consider taking the hard disk out of the PC, installing it in another PC temporarily, not running anything from the disk in question (!) and scanning it for viruses/malware there just in case there is something starting with the OS that is causing this problem and it cannot be detected by scanners on the system itself.
 


Interesting thought, as the bloody thing takes ages to boot in the first place. I will have a bash at this.

Setanta said:
Did either of these identify any programmes/processes which may be hogging up the processor or memory?
They don't solve anything in themselves, but they can help identify what the problem(s) could be.
Click to expand...
No, the idle process was getting all the juice.

Is it easy to revert to factory settings? There is very little on the machine & at this stage I am willing to get back to the Out-of-the-box position & start again.
 
If you bought it new, it should have come with a Dell recovery disc which will allow you to restore the factory settings and 'repair' the OS installation with or without deleting all your data. Maybe try the latter first, and if the problem persists go for the more drastic complete format/reinstallation...

BlueSpud said:
It still feels like driving the car with the handbrake on (not that I know what that felt like.....)
Click to expand...
Are you sure you're not running 'Windows for girls'?

/ducks....
 
ClubMan said:
I would consider taking the hard disk out of the PC, installing it in another PC temporarily, not running anything from the disk in question (!) and scanning it for viruses/malware
Click to expand...
Possibly slightly OT but possibly extremely relevant....

I've seen this technique mentioned a few times on different sites.

I've always wondered so thought I'd ask. Are there many malware/spyware/viruses that would be able to remain undetected even in Safemode?

[presume the answer is yes seeing as the advice is frequently to remove the drive and not simply run in SM]
 
Satanta said:
I've always wondered so thought I'd ask. Are there many malware/spyware/viruses that would be able to remain undetected even in Safemode?
Click to expand...
Good point. I'm not sure. I guess removing the disk is a last resort but it's one that I've found useful in the past.
 
Ctrl+F11 in the boot up stage will allow you to do a full system restore.Then remove all the now restored Dell trialware and abracadabra you'll have a computer that works
 
I just put in the piece about removing the trialware in case the op didn't know that a full system restore brings all this stuff back.I don't think it is the cause of his trouble sounds more like a spyware/malware to me.Did you try spyware terminator or spybot search and destroy? Have a look in the hints for a clean pc thread for links.
 
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