Yet Another Slow Computer
 

My Windows XP Home computer is four years old. It works, but has
become increasingly sluggish.

A quick Google on “slow computer performance” yields a modest 35
million hits, Most are for alleged registry fixes, and I suspect that
at least 34.99 million are virus/Trojan plantings or otherwise
worthless.

So what I'm wondering, after all these years, is there an acknowledged
effective tool for cleanup?

If so, what is it?

And by whom/where has it been tested and its effectiveness verified?

Yet Another Slow Computer
 

There is no such fixit tool, because there are an unlimited number of
reasons for a computer running slowly.

Something to keep in mind: Your computer is running much more software
than it was when you first hit the Power button. Windows Updates have
added mightly to your copy of Windows. Your security software is much
more complicated than it was 4 years ago, since it has to battle so many
new types of threats. You have probably added software, and updated your
existing software. The point is: You can't expect a 4-year computer -
even a well-maintained 4-year old computer - to be as quick down the
road as when it was brand new.

Of course, there is all manner of snake-oil and hype on the internet
promising to speedup your computer. You are wise to stay away from that
garbage.

That said, the most prevalent reasons for slow performance -- even in a
1-year old computer - a

* Malware infection
* Too much software running in the background
* Unwise configuration choices.

There is work you can do to possibly zero-in on what may be slowing your
computer...but it will take concerted troubleshooting by you. There
ain't no magic bullet here.
---
Leonard Grey
Errare humanum est

PT wrote:
My Windows XP Home computer is four years old. It works, but has
become increasingly sluggish.

A quick Google on “slow computer performance” yields a modest 35
million hits, Most are for alleged registry fixes, and I suspect that
at least 34.99 million are virus/Trojan plantings or otherwise
worthless.

So what I'm wondering, after all these years, is there an acknowledged
effective tool for cleanup?

If so, what is it?

And by whom/where has it been tested and its effectiveness verified?

Yet Another Slow Computer
 

On Sep 29, 4:44*am, PT wrote:
My Windows XP Home computer is four years old. *It works, but has
become increasingly sluggish.

A quick Google on “slow computer performance” yields a modest 35
million hits, *Most are for alleged registry fixes, and I suspect that
at least 34.99 million are virus/Trojan plantings or otherwise
worthless.

So what I'm wondering, after all these years, is there an acknowledged
effective tool for cleanup?

If so, what is it?

And by whom/where has it been tested and its effectiveness verified?

Run Malware Bytes and/or similar software to get rid of the nasties.

Yet Another Slow Computer
 

On Sep 28, 11:44*pm, PT wrote:
My Windows XP Home computer is four years old. *It works, but has
become increasingly sluggish.

A quick Google on “slow computer performance” yields a modest 35
million hits, *Most are for alleged registry fixes, and I suspect that
at least 34.99 million are virus/Trojan plantings or otherwise
worthless.

So what I'm wondering, after all these years, is there an acknowledged
effective tool for cleanup?

If so, what is it?

And by whom/where has it been tested and its effectiveness verified?

Run CCleaner (free program) to get rid of temp files. Disable
anything on startup that doesn't need to run on startup.

Yet Another Slow Computer
 

On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:44:27 -0700 (PDT), PT
wrote:

My Windows XP Home computer is four years old. It works, but has
become increasingly sluggish.

A quick Google on “slow computer performance” yields a modest 35
million hits, Most are for alleged registry fixes, and I suspect that
at least 34.99 million are virus/Trojan plantings or otherwise
worthless.

So what I'm wondering, after all these years, is there an acknowledged
effective tool for cleanup?

If so, what is it?

And by whom/where has it been tested and its effectiveness verified?

Take your pick and ask the author .

Yet Another Slow Computer
 

PT wrote:
My Windows XP Home computer is four years old. It works, but has
become increasingly sluggish.

A quick Google on “slow computer performance” yields a modest 35
million hits, Most are for alleged registry fixes, and I suspect that
at least 34.99 million are virus/Trojan plantings or otherwise
worthless.

So what I'm wondering, after all these years, is there an acknowledged
effective tool for cleanup?

If so, what is it?

And by whom/where has it been tested and its effectiveness verified?

Don't confuse cleaning up temp files with running some program that
claims to speed up your PC by "cleaning up" unused registry entries. The
latter is not needed; registry "cleaners" don't yield any appreciable
performance improvement and whenever you run them, you run the risk of
doing serious damage to your PC!

For cleaning up temp files, Windows XP's own Disk Cleanup is effective:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/disk_cleanup_utility.htm

If you want a more thorough method of doing this, one which can clean
*all* profiles at once, Ccleaner is a fine program (but it's not
absolutely necessary; Disk Cleanup is more than adequate):

http://www.ccleaner.com/

Oddly enough, Ccleaner has a registry cleaning component. Just don't use
that component!

To address your sluggishness, here are its typical causes:

1. Malicious software (malware). You need to rule this out first! This
page has excellent information:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/...iruses_Malware

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. (Then again, many programs
that run in the background have trivial consequences.)

To determine every program and process you are currently running, use
the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Processes tab. You should
be able to sort by CPU usage or Memory usage to get a good ideas which
ones are the resource/memory hogs. You should write down the names of
all the processes for future detective work (or take a snapshot and
print it out).

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...p#THE_PROGRAMS
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Taskl...s/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/s.../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!

If you do wish to use msconfig, it may be accessed this way:

Start | Run | type "msconfig" (without the quotation marks) | Enter (or
OK)

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/i...while-copying/

and

http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduc...duck/udma_fix/

Yet Another Slow Computer
 

a sluggish or slow computer can result from
a number of reasons.

infections, mis configuration of device drivers,
corruption or missing files, to name a few
possibilities.

the best way to analyze performance issues is
to boot into safe mode.

if performance is better in safe mode, then at
least you will know that the windows core files
are not corrupted or missing.

how to launch safe mode:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315222

---------------------

keep us apprised of your findings.

--
db·´¯`·...¸)))º
DatabaseBen, Retired Professional
- Systems Analyst
- Database Developer
- Accountancy
- Veteran of the Armed Forces
- @Hotmail.com
- nntp Postologist
~ "share the nirvana" - dbZen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



"PT" wrote in message
...
My Windows XP Home computer is four years old. It works, but has
become increasingly sluggish.

A quick Google on “slow computer performance” yields a modest 35
million hits, Most are for alleged registry fixes, and I suspect that
at least 34.99 million are virus/Trojan plantings or otherwise
worthless.

So what I'm wondering, after all these years, is there an acknowledged
effective tool for cleanup?

If so, what is it?

And by whom/where has it been tested and its effectiveness verified?

Yet Another Slow Computer
 

On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:44:27 -0700 (PDT), PT
wrote:

My Windows XP Home computer is four years old. It works, but has
become increasingly sluggish.

A quick Google on “slow computer performance” yields a modest 35
million hits, Most are for alleged registry fixes, and I suspect that
at least 34.99 million are virus/Trojan plantings or otherwise
worthless.

So what I'm wondering, after all these years, is there an acknowledged
effective tool for cleanup?


No! And virtually every program that is sold telling you it will do
that is worthless at best, and often dangerous. Stay far away from any
such programs.

I of course can't tell you what's wrong, but these days, malware
infection is certainly one of the most common causes of a slowdown.
What anti-virus and anti-spyware programs do you run? Are they up to
date?

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

Yet Another Slow Computer
 

Have you run disk cleanup?
"PT" wrote in message
...
My Windows XP Home computer is four years old. It works, but has
become increasingly sluggish.

A quick Google on “slow computer performance” yields a modest 35
million hits, Most are for alleged registry fixes, and I suspect that
at least 34.99 million are virus/Trojan plantings or otherwise
worthless.

So what I'm wondering, after all these years, is there an acknowledged
effective tool for cleanup?

If so, what is it?

And by whom/where has it been tested and its effectiveness verified?