Computer has slowed way down

Advanced System Care = snakeoil

"myobic" wrote in message
...
I had a computer that took 30-45 seconds to start IE- it showed very
little CPU usage. Malwarebytes did not find anything, nor did Spybot S&D,
nor Spyware blaster, nor adware nor Norton. People blamed Norton, Glary
Utilities, Steven Goulds Cleanup, but then I found a great utility- free-
called Advanced System Care- found it on CNET as a download. The free
version found all kinds of problems but it also found three remote
processes running (probably something my wife downloaded when she opened a
link to some website to visit some cute cartoons that her friends send to
her. Well, those three things got shut down and the computer started
speeding up and has been relatively problem free since then. I also went
online and found some helpful hints to speed up Norton- and their online
techs were helpful there too... (I had been ready to dump Norton...and told
them as much)... and they proved their worth... check out Advanced System
care by IOBIT labs- It found a bunch of stuff to fix EVEN after all the
above programs did their thing and did their best... I was amazed at how
much more stuff it found to fix- including registry defrag....
six months prior to that I was very gung ho on malware bytes- as I had
somehow gottten bitten by some java worm/trojan while on google.com...
all of a sudden- lots of ad popups- mbm found 3 registry keys and 4 dlls
infected and cleaned it up in no time.

good luck

"bayskater" wrote in message
...

Hi Daave,

Well, I dumped McAfee. After it was gone, and before installing any other
security program I tried a little net surfing.
It was quite noticeably faster. It may not be the best it can be, but if
it was this fast I would not have been chasing trouble.
I also dumped Spybot and AdAware and downloaded Microsoft Security
Essentials. Looks good. Would you recommend that I add MBAM also? or
would that be overkill? (I kept SAS).

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing McAfee.

Thanks, ... Fred

"Daave" wrote in message
...
(Replies inline.)

bayskater wrote:
I have an emachines T6520 computer with Windows XP Media Center
edition Service Pack 3 with 2.40Ghz AMD Athlon 64 processor.128 Kb
primary memory cache 512 Kb secondary memory cache. 896 Megabytes
installed memory. My c drive has 150.17 Gb free.

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some of it is
being used by your motherboard's onboard graphics card?

1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP users. But when
you start running programs that require more physical memory than you
actually have, the phenomenon of paging occurs, which can really slow a
system down! Sometimes all that is necessary is adding more RAM.

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on your pagefile
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.

What are your figures?

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

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/

I'm up-to-date on all of Microsoft hot fixes for Windows.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Super Anti- Spyware
frequently.

AdAware and Spybot S&D were once top-notch, but they have fallen out of
favor with many. Also people running IE8 have reported problems if they
also ran Spybot (but I believe there is a fix for that). And sometimes
AdAware can muck things up performance-wise (or at least it used to).

SAS is a good anti-malware program. I would keep this one and uninstall
the other two, And definitely run MBAM.

I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found.

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I wouldn't be
surprised if all or part of your problem is because McAfee is running.
I'd uninstall it, using their removal tool if necessary:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

NOD32 is a superior program, and it is anything but a resource hog. If
you're looking for a *free* antivirus alternative, AVG, Avast, and
AntiVir are all good.

Usually when I try to defrag it says not
necessary to defrag, but a couple of days ago I did a defrag and it
did not help .

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that is, an
NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98 did). I would still
defrag, but two or three times a year is probably fine.

I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it seems like I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff running in
the back ground using up memory (or is it system resources?)

The way to determine that is by the Task Manager exercise I gave you
above. It might be too many. Or not.

The big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K

Whoah, Nelly! Uninstall that beast!!!!! (McAfee.)

explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K

I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just run it
whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall it.

sychost.exe 17,240K

In another post, I see you corrected that: svchost.exe

There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47%
up to 100%

And the top five (and their CPU usage ranges) are?

Looking at the startup tab in msconfig I see about 25 items listed.
Some I can recognize as names of programs, but most have names I
don't recognize (such as atiptaxx, PDVDserv,Zhotkey Etc..) I copied
several of the unknowns into Google searches and, mostly I found
vague descriptions and comments such as "Not dangerous, not
necessary, but recommend keeping it unless it is known to be causing
problems" I unchecked about 6 of them and don't notice any difference
in performance.

It's possible to have a whole mess of these and not have a problem with
a performance. If they are not using too many CPU cycles and if the RAM
you have is adequate (to prevent paging), you need not worry about
these. Then again, a few may be problematic. The figures will tell you.

Finally, my question:
Can anyone suggest a sensible way to approach clearing out
unnecessary stuff in my Startup and Ctl/Alt/Del list of running
processes? It would seem that if I deleted them one-at-a-time, it
would take forever and would be hard to know if taking one out had
made a difference. And, does it seem like this is a good approach to
speeding my computer up?

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance. Re-enable half.
Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it down to one.

So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If performance is just as bad,
then you know it's still the fault of the 20 remaining, so disable 10 of
those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just make sure
you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft Services" so that you
don't prevent a needed service from running!

Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic exercise. If there are
programs you want to keep but would like to prevent them from
automatically starting at each boot, you really should go into each
program's preferences to accomplish this (this is the preferred way;
otherwise you might find a brand new entry for the same process (!)
appearing in msconfig after the next boot!).

In another post, you had asked about registry cleaners. This page should
explain the reason to avoid them:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp...-cleaners.html

The bottom line is that they don't offer any noticeable performance
boost. And since their use could produce a situation that is undesirable
(like not being able to boot into Windows!), they are not recommended by
most knowledgeable people.

To all who responded to my request for help:
My sincere thanks to all of you that took the time to try to help me out.
It seems that my problem has been solved.
The main cause of the problem seems to have been the McAfee Security System,
which I have uninstalled at the suggestion of a couple of people that
responded to my post.
In its place I have downloaded the free program Microsoft Security
Essentials It looks good. Easy to install and use and has nice features.
http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/
I made the same changes to my wife's laptop and she's delighted with the
increased speed.
Along the way I learned some things that may help me solve future problems,
like using the Windows Task Manager.
Its great to have acess to these MS newsgroups so duffers like me can get
some expert advice.

Thanks again, ... Fred
================================================== =========================
"Daave" wrote in message
...
bayskater wrote:
Hi Daave,

Well, I dumped McAfee. After it was gone, and before installing any
other security program I tried a little net surfing.
It was quite noticeably faster. It may not be the best it can be, but
if it was this fast I would not have been chasing trouble.
I also dumped Spybot and AdAware and downloaded Microsoft Security
Essentials. Looks good. Would you recommend that I add MBAM also? or
would that be overkill? (I kept SAS).

I know someone else recommended Security Essentials. I wouldn't recommend
it because I have absolutely no experience using it. I recommended a
combination of SAS and MBAM for your anti-malware programs and one of the
following for antivirus:

NOD32
AVG
Avast
AntiVir

(the last 3 are all free).

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing McAfee.

Thanks, ... Fred

"Daave" wrote in message
...
(Replies inline.)

bayskater wrote:
I have an emachines T6520 computer with Windows XP Media Center
edition Service Pack 3 with 2.40Ghz AMD Athlon 64 processor.128 Kb
primary memory cache 512 Kb secondary memory cache. 896 Megabytes
installed memory. My c drive has 150.17 Gb free.

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some of it is
being used by your motherboard's onboard graphics card?

1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP users. But
when you start running programs that require more physical memory
than you actually have, the phenomenon of paging occurs, which can
really slow a system down! Sometimes all that is necessary is adding
more RAM. A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on
your
pagefile 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. What are your figures?

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

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/

I'm up-to-date on all of Microsoft hot fixes for Windows.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Super Anti- Spyware
frequently.

AdAware and Spybot S&D were once top-notch, but they have fallen out
of favor with many. Also people running IE8 have reported problems
if they also ran Spybot (but I believe there is a fix for that). And
sometimes AdAware can muck things up performance-wise (or at least
it used to). SAS is a good anti-malware program. I would keep this one
and
uninstall the other two, And definitely run MBAM.

I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found.

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I wouldn't be
surprised if all or part of your problem is because McAfee is
running. I'd uninstall it, using their removal tool if necessary:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

NOD32 is a superior program, and it is anything but a resource hog.
If you're looking for a *free* antivirus alternative, AVG, Avast,
and AntiVir are all good.

Usually when I try to defrag it says not
necessary to defrag, but a couple of days ago I did a defrag and it
did not help .

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that is, an
NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98 did). I would
still defrag, but two or three times a year is probably fine.

I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it seems like
I may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff running
in the back ground using up memory (or is it system resources?)

The way to determine that is by the Task Manager exercise I gave you
above. It might be too many. Or not.

The big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K

Whoah, Nelly! Uninstall that beast!!!!! (McAfee.)

explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K

I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just run it
whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall it.

sychost.exe 17,240K

In another post, I see you corrected that: svchost.exe

There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47%
up to 100%

And the top five (and their CPU usage ranges) are?

Looking at the startup tab in msconfig I see about 25 items listed.
Some I can recognize as names of programs, but most have names I
don't recognize (such as atiptaxx, PDVDserv,Zhotkey Etc..) I copied
several of the unknowns into Google searches and, mostly I found
vague descriptions and comments such as "Not dangerous, not
necessary, but recommend keeping it unless it is known to be causing
problems" I unchecked about 6 of them and don't notice any
difference in performance.

It's possible to have a whole mess of these and not have a problem
with a performance. If they are not using too many CPU cycles and if
the RAM you have is adequate (to prevent paging), you need not worry
about these. Then again, a few may be problematic. The figures will
tell you.
Finally, my question:
Can anyone suggest a sensible way to approach clearing out
unnecessary stuff in my Startup and Ctl/Alt/Del list of running
processes? It would seem that if I deleted them one-at-a-time, it
would take forever and would be hard to know if taking one out had
made a difference. And, does it seem like this is a good approach to
speeding my computer up?

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance. Re-enable
half. Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it down to one.

So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If performance is just as
bad, then you know it's still the fault of the 20 remaining, so
disable 10 of those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just make
sure you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft Services" so that
you don't prevent a needed service from running!

Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic exercise. If there
are programs you want to keep but would like to prevent them from
automatically starting at each boot, you really should go into each
program's preferences to accomplish this (this is the preferred way;
otherwise you might find a brand new entry for the same process (!)
appearing in msconfig after the next boot!).

In another post, you had asked about registry cleaners. This page
should explain the reason to avoid them:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp...-cleaners.html

The bottom line is that they don't offer any noticeable performance
boost. And since their use could produce a situation that is
undesirable (like not being able to boot into Windows!), they are
not recommended by most knowledgeable people.

Thanks for letting us know the good news. Glad to help.

bayskater wrote:
To all who responded to my request for help:
My sincere thanks to all of you that took the time to try to help me
out. It seems that my problem has been solved.
The main cause of the problem seems to have been the McAfee Security
System, which I have uninstalled at the suggestion of a couple of
people that responded to my post.
In its place I have downloaded the free program Microsoft Security
Essentials It looks good. Easy to install and use and has nice
features. http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/
I made the same changes to my wife's laptop and she's delighted with
the increased speed.
Along the way I learned some things that may help me solve future
problems, like using the Windows Task Manager.
Its great to have acess to these MS newsgroups so duffers like me can
get some expert advice.

Thanks again, ... Fred
================================================== =========================
"Daave" wrote in message
...
bayskater wrote:
Hi Daave,

Well, I dumped McAfee. After it was gone, and before installing any
other security program I tried a little net surfing.
It was quite noticeably faster. It may not be the best it can be,
but if it was this fast I would not have been chasing trouble.
I also dumped Spybot and AdAware and downloaded Microsoft Security
Essentials. Looks good. Would you recommend that I add MBAM also? or
would that be overkill? (I kept SAS).

I know someone else recommended Security Essentials. I wouldn't
recommend it because I have absolutely no experience using it. I
recommended a combination of SAS and MBAM for your anti-malware
programs and one of the following for antivirus:

NOD32
AVG
Avast
AntiVir

(the last 3 are all free).

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing McAfee.

Thanks, ... Fred

"Daave" wrote in message
...
(Replies inline.)

bayskater wrote:
I have an emachines T6520 computer with Windows XP Media Center
edition Service Pack 3 with 2.40Ghz AMD Athlon 64 processor.128 Kb
primary memory cache 512 Kb secondary memory cache. 896 Megabytes
installed memory. My c drive has 150.17 Gb free.

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some of it
is being used by your motherboard's onboard graphics card?

1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP users. But
when you start running programs that require more physical memory
than you actually have, the phenomenon of paging occurs, which can
really slow a system down! Sometimes all that is necessary is
adding more RAM. A quick way to determine if you are relying too
heavily on your
pagefile 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. What are your figures?

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

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/

I'm up-to-date on all of Microsoft hot fixes for Windows.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Super Anti- Spyware
frequently.

AdAware and Spybot S&D were once top-notch, but they have fallen
out of favor with many. Also people running IE8 have reported
problems if they also ran Spybot (but I believe there is a fix for
that).
And sometimes AdAware can muck things up performance-wise (or at
least it used to). SAS is a good anti-malware program. I would keep
this
one and
uninstall the other two, And definitely run MBAM.

I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found.

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I wouldn't be
surprised if all or part of your problem is because McAfee is
running. I'd uninstall it, using their removal tool if necessary:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

NOD32 is a superior program, and it is anything but a resource hog.
If you're looking for a *free* antivirus alternative, AVG, Avast,
and AntiVir are all good.

Usually when I try to defrag it says not
necessary to defrag, but a couple of days ago I did a defrag and
it did not help .

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that is,
an NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98 did). I
would still defrag, but two or three times a year is probably fine.

I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it seems
like I may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff
running in the back ground using up memory (or is it system
resources?)

The way to determine that is by the Task Manager exercise I gave
you above. It might be too many. Or not.

The big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K

Whoah, Nelly! Uninstall that beast!!!!! (McAfee.)

explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K

I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just run it
whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall it.

sychost.exe 17,240K

In another post, I see you corrected that: svchost.exe

There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about
47% up to 100%

And the top five (and their CPU usage ranges) are?

Looking at the startup tab in msconfig I see about 25 items
listed. Some I can recognize as names of programs, but most have
names I don't recognize (such as atiptaxx, PDVDserv,Zhotkey
Etc..) I copied several of the unknowns into Google searches and,
mostly I found vague descriptions and comments such as "Not
dangerous, not necessary, but recommend keeping it unless it is
known to be causing problems" I unchecked about 6 of them and
don't notice any difference in performance.

It's possible to have a whole mess of these and not have a problem
with a performance. If they are not using too many CPU cycles and
if the RAM you have is adequate (to prevent paging), you need not
worry about these. Then again, a few may be problematic. The
figures will tell you.
Finally, my question:
Can anyone suggest a sensible way to approach clearing out
unnecessary stuff in my Startup and Ctl/Alt/Del list of running
processes? It would seem that if I deleted them one-at-a-time, it
would take forever and would be hard to know if taking one out had
made a difference. And, does it seem like this is a good approach
to speeding my computer up?

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance. Re-enable
half. Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it down to one.

So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If performance is just as
bad, then you know it's still the fault of the 20 remaining, so
disable 10 of those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just make
sure you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft Services" so
that you don't prevent a needed service from running!

Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic exercise. If there
are programs you want to keep but would like to prevent them from
automatically starting at each boot, you really should go into each
program's preferences to accomplish this (this is the preferred
way; otherwise you might find a brand new entry for the same
process (!) appearing in msconfig after the next boot!).

In another post, you had asked about registry cleaners. This page
should explain the reason to avoid them:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp...-cleaners.html

The bottom line is that they don't offer any noticeable performance
boost. And since their use could produce a situation that is
undesirable (like not being able to boot into Windows!), they are
not recommended by most knowledgeable people.

"bayskater" wrote in message
...
To all who responded to my request for help:
My sincere thanks to all of you that took the time to try to help me out.
It seems that my problem has been solved.
The main cause of the problem seems to have been the McAfee Security
System, which I have uninstalled at the suggestion of a couple of people
that responded to my post.
In its place I have downloaded the free program Microsoft Security
Essentials It looks good. Easy to install and use and has nice features.
http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/
I made the same changes to my wife's laptop and she's delighted with the
increased speed.
Along the way I learned some things that may help me solve future
problems, like using the Windows Task Manager.
Its great to have acess to these MS newsgroups so duffers like me can get
some expert advice.

Thanks again, ... Fred
================================================== =========================
"Daave" wrote in message
...
bayskater wrote:
Hi Daave,

Well, I dumped McAfee. After it was gone, and before installing any
other security program I tried a little net surfing.
It was quite noticeably faster. It may not be the best it can be, but
if it was this fast I would not have been chasing trouble.
I also dumped Spybot and AdAware and downloaded Microsoft Security
Essentials. Looks good. Would you recommend that I add MBAM also? or
would that be overkill? (I kept SAS).

I know someone else recommended Security Essentials. I wouldn't recommend
it because I have absolutely no experience using it. I recommended a
combination of SAS and MBAM for your anti-malware programs and one of the
following for antivirus:

NOD32
AVG
Avast
AntiVir

(the last 3 are all free).

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing McAfee.

Thanks, ... Fred

"Daave" wrote in message
...
(Replies inline.)

bayskater wrote:
I have an emachines T6520 computer with Windows XP Media Center
edition Service Pack 3 with 2.40Ghz AMD Athlon 64 processor.128 Kb
primary memory cache 512 Kb secondary memory cache. 896 Megabytes
installed memory. My c drive has 150.17 Gb free.

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some of it is
being used by your motherboard's onboard graphics card?

1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP users. But
when you start running programs that require more physical memory
than you actually have, the phenomenon of paging occurs, which can
really slow a system down! Sometimes all that is necessary is adding
more RAM. A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on
your
pagefile 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. What are your figures?

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

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/

I'm up-to-date on all of Microsoft hot fixes for Windows.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Super Anti- Spyware
frequently.

AdAware and Spybot S&D were once top-notch, but they have fallen out
of favor with many. Also people running IE8 have reported problems
if they also ran Spybot (but I believe there is a fix for that). And
sometimes AdAware can muck things up performance-wise (or at least
it used to). SAS is a good anti-malware program. I would keep this one
and
uninstall the other two, And definitely run MBAM.

I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found.

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I wouldn't be
surprised if all or part of your problem is because McAfee is
running. I'd uninstall it, using their removal tool if necessary:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

NOD32 is a superior program, and it is anything but a resource hog.
If you're looking for a *free* antivirus alternative, AVG, Avast,
and AntiVir are all good.

Usually when I try to defrag it says not
necessary to defrag, but a couple of days ago I did a defrag and it
did not help .

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that is, an
NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98 did). I would
still defrag, but two or three times a year is probably fine.

I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it seems like
I may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff running
in the back ground using up memory (or is it system resources?)

The way to determine that is by the Task Manager exercise I gave you
above. It might be too many. Or not.

The big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K

Whoah, Nelly! Uninstall that beast!!!!! (McAfee.)

explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K

I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just run it
whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall it.

sychost.exe 17,240K

In another post, I see you corrected that: svchost.exe

There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47%
up to 100%

And the top five (and their CPU usage ranges) are?

Looking at the startup tab in msconfig I see about 25 items listed.
Some I can recognize as names of programs, but most have names I
don't recognize (such as atiptaxx, PDVDserv,Zhotkey Etc..) I copied
several of the unknowns into Google searches and, mostly I found
vague descriptions and comments such as "Not dangerous, not
necessary, but recommend keeping it unless it is known to be causing
problems" I unchecked about 6 of them and don't notice any
difference in performance.

It's possible to have a whole mess of these and not have a problem
with a performance. If they are not using too many CPU cycles and if
the RAM you have is adequate (to prevent paging), you need not worry
about these. Then again, a few may be problematic. The figures will
tell you.
Finally, my question:
Can anyone suggest a sensible way to approach clearing out
unnecessary stuff in my Startup and Ctl/Alt/Del list of running
processes? It would seem that if I deleted them one-at-a-time, it
would take forever and would be hard to know if taking one out had
made a difference. And, does it seem like this is a good approach to
speeding my computer up?

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance. Re-enable
half. Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it down to one.

So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If performance is just as
bad, then you know it's still the fault of the 20 remaining, so
disable 10 of those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just make
sure you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft Services" so that
you don't prevent a needed service from running!

Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic exercise. If there
are programs you want to keep but would like to prevent them from
automatically starting at each boot, you really should go into each
program's preferences to accomplish this (this is the preferred way;
otherwise you might find a brand new entry for the same process (!)
appearing in msconfig after the next boot!).

In another post, you had asked about registry cleaners. This page
should explain the reason to avoid them:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp...-cleaners.html

The bottom line is that they don't offer any noticeable performance
boost. And since their use could produce a situation that is
undesirable (like not being able to boot into Windows!), they are
not recommended by most knowledgeable people.







Glad you are up and running and are now a happy camper. Isn't it amazing at
how the big Antivirus/Anti Malware boys can bog down a computer?

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience & Security

bayskater wrote:
Hi Daave,

Well, I dumped McAfee. After it was gone, and before installing any other
security program I tried a little net surfing.
It was quite noticeably faster. It may not be the best it can be, but if it
was this fast I would not have been chasing trouble.
I also dumped Spybot and AdAware and downloaded Microsoft Security
Essentials. Looks good. Would you recommend that I add MBAM also? or would
that be overkill? (I kept SAS).

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing McAfee.

Thanks, ... Fred

"Daave" wrote in message
...
(Replies inline.)

bayskater wrote:
I have an emachines T6520 computer with Windows XP Media Center
edition Service Pack 3 with 2.40Ghz AMD Athlon 64 processor.128 Kb
primary memory cache 512 Kb secondary memory cache. 896 Megabytes
installed memory. My c drive has 150.17 Gb free.
Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some of it is being
used by your motherboard's onboard graphics card?

1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP users. But when you
start running programs that require more physical memory than you actually
have, the phenomenon of paging occurs, which can really slow a system
down! Sometimes all that is necessary is adding more RAM.

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on your pagefile
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.

What are your figures?

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

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/

I'm up-to-date on all of Microsoft hot fixes for Windows.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Super Anti- Spyware
frequently.
AdAware and Spybot S&D were once top-notch, but they have fallen out of
favor with many. Also people running IE8 have reported problems if they
also ran Spybot (but I believe there is a fix for that). And sometimes
AdAware can muck things up performance-wise (or at least it used to).

SAS is a good anti-malware program. I would keep this one and uninstall
the other two, And definitely run MBAM.

I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found.
Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I wouldn't be
surprised if all or part of your problem is because McAfee is running. I'd
uninstall it, using their removal tool if necessary:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

NOD32 is a superior program, and it is anything but a resource hog. If
you're looking for a *free* antivirus alternative, AVG, Avast, and AntiVir
are all good.

Usually when I try to defrag it says not
necessary to defrag, but a couple of days ago I did a defrag and it
did not help .
Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that is, an
NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98 did). I would still
defrag, but two or three times a year is probably fine.

I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it seems like I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff running in
the back ground using up memory (or is it system resources?)
The way to determine that is by the Task Manager exercise I gave you
above. It might be too many. Or not.

The big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K
Whoah, Nelly! Uninstall that beast!!!!! (McAfee.)

explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K
I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just run it
whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall it.

sychost.exe 17,240K
In another post, I see you corrected that: svchost.exe

There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47%
up to 100%
And the top five (and their CPU usage ranges) are?

Looking at the startup tab in msconfig I see about 25 items listed.
Some I can recognize as names of programs, but most have names I
don't recognize (such as atiptaxx, PDVDserv,Zhotkey Etc..) I copied
several of the unknowns into Google searches and, mostly I found
vague descriptions and comments such as "Not dangerous, not
necessary, but recommend keeping it unless it is known to be causing
problems" I unchecked about 6 of them and don't notice any difference
in performance.
It's possible to have a whole mess of these and not have a problem with a
performance. If they are not using too many CPU cycles and if the RAM you
have is adequate (to prevent paging), you need not worry about these. Then
again, a few may be problematic. The figures will tell you.

Finally, my question:
Can anyone suggest a sensible way to approach clearing out
unnecessary stuff in my Startup and Ctl/Alt/Del list of running
processes? It would seem that if I deleted them one-at-a-time, it
would take forever and would be hard to know if taking one out had
made a difference. And, does it seem like this is a good approach to
speeding my computer up?
Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance. Re-enable half.
Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it down to one.

So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If performance is just as bad,
then you know it's still the fault of the 20 remaining, so disable 10 of
those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just make sure you
check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft Services" so that you don't
prevent a needed service from running!

Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic exercise. If there are
programs you want to keep but would like to prevent them from
automatically starting at each boot, you really should go into each
program's preferences to accomplish this (this is the preferred way;
otherwise you might find a brand new entry for the same process (!)
appearing in msconfig after the next boot!).

In another post, you had asked about registry cleaners. This page should
explain the reason to avoid them:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp...-cleaners.html

The bottom line is that they don't offer any noticeable performance boost.
And since their use could produce a situation that is undesirable (like
not being able to boot into Windows!), they are not recommended by most
knowledgeable people.

It wouldn't hurt to have MAB as well. It's possible that there is some
malware out there that one program will detect, yet others miss. So
having more than one Spyware/Malware program on hand is a good thing.

--

Roy Smith
Windows XP Pro SP3

bayskater wrote:
Hi Daave,

Well, I dumped McAfee. After it was gone, and before installing any other
security program I tried a little net surfing.
It was quite noticeably faster. It may not be the best it can be, but if it
was this fast I would not have been chasing trouble.
I also dumped Spybot and AdAware and downloaded Microsoft Security
Essentials. Looks good. Would you recommend that I add MBAM also? or would
that be overkill? (I kept SAS).

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing McAfee.

Thanks, ... Fred

"Daave" wrote in message
...
(Replies inline.)

bayskater wrote:
I have an emachines T6520 computer with Windows XP Media Center
edition Service Pack 3 with 2.40Ghz AMD Athlon 64 processor.128 Kb
primary memory cache 512 Kb secondary memory cache. 896 Megabytes
installed memory. My c drive has 150.17 Gb free.
Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some of it is being
used by your motherboard's onboard graphics card?

1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP users. But when you
start running programs that require more physical memory than you actually
have, the phenomenon of paging occurs, which can really slow a system
down! Sometimes all that is necessary is adding more RAM.

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on your pagefile
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.

What are your figures?

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

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/

I'm up-to-date on all of Microsoft hot fixes for Windows.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Super Anti- Spyware
frequently.
AdAware and Spybot S&D were once top-notch, but they have fallen out of
favor with many. Also people running IE8 have reported problems if they
also ran Spybot (but I believe there is a fix for that). And sometimes
AdAware can muck things up performance-wise (or at least it used to).

SAS is a good anti-malware program. I would keep this one and uninstall
the other two, And definitely run MBAM.

I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found.
Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I wouldn't be
surprised if all or part of your problem is because McAfee is running. I'd
uninstall it, using their removal tool if necessary:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

NOD32 is a superior program, and it is anything but a resource hog. If
you're looking for a *free* antivirus alternative, AVG, Avast, and AntiVir
are all good.

Usually when I try to defrag it says not
necessary to defrag, but a couple of days ago I did a defrag and it
did not help .
Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that is, an
NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98 did). I would still
defrag, but two or three times a year is probably fine.

I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it seems like I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff running in
the back ground using up memory (or is it system resources?)
The way to determine that is by the Task Manager exercise I gave you
above. It might be too many. Or not.

The big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K
Whoah, Nelly! Uninstall that beast!!!!! (McAfee.)

explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K
I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just run it
whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall it.

sychost.exe 17,240K
In another post, I see you corrected that: svchost.exe

There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47%
up to 100%
And the top five (and their CPU usage ranges) are?

Looking at the startup tab in msconfig I see about 25 items listed.
Some I can recognize as names of programs, but most have names I
don't recognize (such as atiptaxx, PDVDserv,Zhotkey Etc..) I copied
several of the unknowns into Google searches and, mostly I found
vague descriptions and comments such as "Not dangerous, not
necessary, but recommend keeping it unless it is known to be causing
problems" I unchecked about 6 of them and don't notice any difference
in performance.
It's possible to have a whole mess of these and not have a problem with a
performance. If they are not using too many CPU cycles and if the RAM you
have is adequate (to prevent paging), you need not worry about these. Then
again, a few may be problematic. The figures will tell you.

Finally, my question:
Can anyone suggest a sensible way to approach clearing out
unnecessary stuff in my Startup and Ctl/Alt/Del list of running
processes? It would seem that if I deleted them one-at-a-time, it
would take forever and would be hard to know if taking one out had
made a difference. And, does it seem like this is a good approach to
speeding my computer up?
Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance. Re-enable half.
Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it down to one.

So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If performance is just as bad,
then you know it's still the fault of the 20 remaining, so disable 10 of
those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just make sure you
check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft Services" so that you don't
prevent a needed service from running!

Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic exercise. If there are
programs you want to keep but would like to prevent them from
automatically starting at each boot, you really should go into each
program's preferences to accomplish this (this is the preferred way;
otherwise you might find a brand new entry for the same process (!)
appearing in msconfig after the next boot!).

In another post, you had asked about registry cleaners. This page should
explain the reason to avoid them:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp...-cleaners.html

The bottom line is that they don't offer any noticeable performance boost.
And since their use could produce a situation that is undesirable (like
not being able to boot into Windows!), they are not recommended by most
knowledgeable people.

It wouldn't hurt to have MAB as well. It's possible that there is some
malware out there that one program will detect, yet others miss. So
having more than one Spyware/Malware program on hand is a good thing.

--

Roy Smith
Windows XP Pro SP3

If you believe registry defrag has any value, you'll believe anything. Your
post is spam.
"myobic" wrote in message
...
I had a computer that took 30-45 seconds to start IE- it showed very
little CPU usage. Malwarebytes did not find anything, nor did Spybot S&D,
nor Spyware blaster, nor adware nor Norton. People blamed Norton, Glary
Utilities, Steven Goulds Cleanup, but then I found a great utility- free-
called Advanced System Care- found it on CNET as a download. The free
version found all kinds of problems but it also found three remote
processes running (probably something my wife downloaded when she opened a
link to some website to visit some cute cartoons that her friends send to
her. Well, those three things got shut down and the computer started
speeding up and has been relatively problem free since then. I also went
online and found some helpful hints to speed up Norton- and their online
techs were helpful there too... (I had been ready to dump Norton...and told
them as much)... and they proved their worth... check out Advanced System
care by IOBIT labs- It found a bunch of stuff to fix EVEN after all the
above programs did their thing and did their best... I was amazed at how
much more stuff it found to fix- including registry defrag....
six months prior to that I was very gung ho on malware bytes- as I had
somehow gottten bitten by some java worm/trojan while on google.com...
all of a sudden- lots of ad popups- mbm found 3 registry keys and 4 dlls
infected and cleaned it up in no time.

good luck

"bayskater" wrote in message
...

Hi Daave,

Well, I dumped McAfee. After it was gone, and before installing any other
security program I tried a little net surfing.
It was quite noticeably faster. It may not be the best it can be, but if
it was this fast I would not have been chasing trouble.
I also dumped Spybot and AdAware and downloaded Microsoft Security
Essentials. Looks good. Would you recommend that I add MBAM also? or
would that be overkill? (I kept SAS).

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing McAfee.

Thanks, ... Fred

"Daave" wrote in message
...
(Replies inline.)

bayskater wrote:
I have an emachines T6520 computer with Windows XP Media Center
edition Service Pack 3 with 2.40Ghz AMD Athlon 64 processor.128 Kb
primary memory cache 512 Kb secondary memory cache. 896 Megabytes
installed memory. My c drive has 150.17 Gb free.

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some of it is
being used by your motherboard's onboard graphics card?

1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP users. But when
you start running programs that require more physical memory than you
actually have, the phenomenon of paging occurs, which can really slow a
system down! Sometimes all that is necessary is adding more RAM.

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on your pagefile
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.

What are your figures?

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

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/

I'm up-to-date on all of Microsoft hot fixes for Windows.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Super Anti- Spyware
frequently.

AdAware and Spybot S&D were once top-notch, but they have fallen out of
favor with many. Also people running IE8 have reported problems if they
also ran Spybot (but I believe there is a fix for that). And sometimes
AdAware can muck things up performance-wise (or at least it used to).

SAS is a good anti-malware program. I would keep this one and uninstall
the other two, And definitely run MBAM.

I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found.

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I wouldn't be
surprised if all or part of your problem is because McAfee is running.
I'd uninstall it, using their removal tool if necessary:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

NOD32 is a superior program, and it is anything but a resource hog. If
you're looking for a *free* antivirus alternative, AVG, Avast, and
AntiVir are all good.

Usually when I try to defrag it says not
necessary to defrag, but a couple of days ago I did a defrag and it
did not help .

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that is, an
NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98 did). I would still
defrag, but two or three times a year is probably fine.

I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it seems like I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff running in
the back ground using up memory (or is it system resources?)

The way to determine that is by the Task Manager exercise I gave you
above. It might be too many. Or not.

The big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K

Whoah, Nelly! Uninstall that beast!!!!! (McAfee.)

explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K

I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just run it
whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall it.

sychost.exe 17,240K

In another post, I see you corrected that: svchost.exe

There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47%
up to 100%

And the top five (and their CPU usage ranges) are?

Looking at the startup tab in msconfig I see about 25 items listed.
Some I can recognize as names of programs, but most have names I
don't recognize (such as atiptaxx, PDVDserv,Zhotkey Etc..) I copied
several of the unknowns into Google searches and, mostly I found
vague descriptions and comments such as "Not dangerous, not
necessary, but recommend keeping it unless it is known to be causing
problems" I unchecked about 6 of them and don't notice any difference
in performance.

It's possible to have a whole mess of these and not have a problem with
a performance. If they are not using too many CPU cycles and if the RAM
you have is adequate (to prevent paging), you need not worry about
these. Then again, a few may be problematic. The figures will tell you.

Finally, my question:
Can anyone suggest a sensible way to approach clearing out
unnecessary stuff in my Startup and Ctl/Alt/Del list of running
processes? It would seem that if I deleted them one-at-a-time, it
would take forever and would be hard to know if taking one out had
made a difference. And, does it seem like this is a good approach to
speeding my computer up?

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance. Re-enable half.
Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it down to one.

So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If performance is just as bad,
then you know it's still the fault of the 20 remaining, so disable 10 of
those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just make sure
you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft Services" so that you
don't prevent a needed service from running!

Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic exercise. If there are
programs you want to keep but would like to prevent them from
automatically starting at each boot, you really should go into each
program's preferences to accomplish this (this is the preferred way;
otherwise you might find a brand new entry for the same process (!)
appearing in msconfig after the next boot!).

In another post, you had asked about registry cleaners. This page should
explain the reason to avoid them:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp...-cleaners.html

The bottom line is that they don't offer any noticeable performance
boost. And since their use could produce a situation that is undesirable
(like not being able to boot into Windows!), they are not recommended by
most knowledgeable people.

If you believe registry defrag has any value, you'll believe anything. Your
post is spam.
"myobic" wrote in message
...
I had a computer that took 30-45 seconds to start IE- it showed very
little CPU usage. Malwarebytes did not find anything, nor did Spybot S&D,
nor Spyware blaster, nor adware nor Norton. People blamed Norton, Glary
Utilities, Steven Goulds Cleanup, but then I found a great utility- free-
called Advanced System Care- found it on CNET as a download. The free
version found all kinds of problems but it also found three remote
processes running (probably something my wife downloaded when she opened a
link to some website to visit some cute cartoons that her friends send to
her. Well, those three things got shut down and the computer started
speeding up and has been relatively problem free since then. I also went
online and found some helpful hints to speed up Norton- and their online
techs were helpful there too... (I had been ready to dump Norton...and told
them as much)... and they proved their worth... check out Advanced System
care by IOBIT labs- It found a bunch of stuff to fix EVEN after all the
above programs did their thing and did their best... I was amazed at how
much more stuff it found to fix- including registry defrag....
six months prior to that I was very gung ho on malware bytes- as I had
somehow gottten bitten by some java worm/trojan while on google.com...
all of a sudden- lots of ad popups- mbm found 3 registry keys and 4 dlls
infected and cleaned it up in no time.

good luck

"bayskater" wrote in message
...

Hi Daave,

Well, I dumped McAfee. After it was gone, and before installing any other
security program I tried a little net surfing.
It was quite noticeably faster. It may not be the best it can be, but if
it was this fast I would not have been chasing trouble.
I also dumped Spybot and AdAware and downloaded Microsoft Security
Essentials. Looks good. Would you recommend that I add MBAM also? or
would that be overkill? (I kept SAS).

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing McAfee.

Thanks, ... Fred

"Daave" wrote in message
...
(Replies inline.)

bayskater wrote:
I have an emachines T6520 computer with Windows XP Media Center
edition Service Pack 3 with 2.40Ghz AMD Athlon 64 processor.128 Kb
primary memory cache 512 Kb secondary memory cache. 896 Megabytes
installed memory. My c drive has 150.17 Gb free.

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some of it is
being used by your motherboard's onboard graphics card?

1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP users. But when
you start running programs that require more physical memory than you
actually have, the phenomenon of paging occurs, which can really slow a
system down! Sometimes all that is necessary is adding more RAM.

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on your pagefile
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.

What are your figures?

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

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/

I'm up-to-date on all of Microsoft hot fixes for Windows.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Super Anti- Spyware
frequently.

AdAware and Spybot S&D were once top-notch, but they have fallen out of
favor with many. Also people running IE8 have reported problems if they
also ran Spybot (but I believe there is a fix for that). And sometimes
AdAware can muck things up performance-wise (or at least it used to).

SAS is a good anti-malware program. I would keep this one and uninstall
the other two, And definitely run MBAM.

I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found.

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I wouldn't be
surprised if all or part of your problem is because McAfee is running.
I'd uninstall it, using their removal tool if necessary:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

NOD32 is a superior program, and it is anything but a resource hog. If
you're looking for a *free* antivirus alternative, AVG, Avast, and
AntiVir are all good.

Usually when I try to defrag it says not
necessary to defrag, but a couple of days ago I did a defrag and it
did not help .

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that is, an
NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98 did). I would still
defrag, but two or three times a year is probably fine.

I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it seems like I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff running in
the back ground using up memory (or is it system resources?)

The way to determine that is by the Task Manager exercise I gave you
above. It might be too many. Or not.

The big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K

Whoah, Nelly! Uninstall that beast!!!!! (McAfee.)

explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K

I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just run it
whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall it.

sychost.exe 17,240K

In another post, I see you corrected that: svchost.exe

There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47%
up to 100%

And the top five (and their CPU usage ranges) are?

Looking at the startup tab in msconfig I see about 25 items listed.
Some I can recognize as names of programs, but most have names I
don't recognize (such as atiptaxx, PDVDserv,Zhotkey Etc..) I copied
several of the unknowns into Google searches and, mostly I found
vague descriptions and comments such as "Not dangerous, not
necessary, but recommend keeping it unless it is known to be causing
problems" I unchecked about 6 of them and don't notice any difference
in performance.

It's possible to have a whole mess of these and not have a problem with
a performance. If they are not using too many CPU cycles and if the RAM
you have is adequate (to prevent paging), you need not worry about
these. Then again, a few may be problematic. The figures will tell you.

Finally, my question:
Can anyone suggest a sensible way to approach clearing out
unnecessary stuff in my Startup and Ctl/Alt/Del list of running
processes? It would seem that if I deleted them one-at-a-time, it
would take forever and would be hard to know if taking one out had
made a difference. And, does it seem like this is a good approach to
speeding my computer up?

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance. Re-enable half.
Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it down to one.

So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If performance is just as bad,
then you know it's still the fault of the 20 remaining, so disable 10 of
those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just make sure
you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft Services" so that you
don't prevent a needed service from running!

Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic exercise. If there are
programs you want to keep but would like to prevent them from
automatically starting at each boot, you really should go into each
program's preferences to accomplish this (this is the preferred way;
otherwise you might find a brand new entry for the same process (!)
appearing in msconfig after the next boot!).

In another post, you had asked about registry cleaners. This page should
explain the reason to avoid them:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp...-cleaners.html

The bottom line is that they don't offer any noticeable performance
boost. And since their use could produce a situation that is undesirable
(like not being able to boot into Windows!), they are not recommended by
most knowledgeable people.

why?

"DL" wrote in message
...
Advanced System Care = snakeoil

"myobic" wrote in message
...
I had a computer that took 30-45 seconds to start IE- it showed very
little CPU usage. Malwarebytes did not find anything, nor did Spybot S&D,
nor Spyware blaster, nor adware nor Norton. People blamed Norton, Glary
Utilities, Steven Goulds Cleanup, but then I found a great utility-
free- called Advanced System Care- found it on CNET as a download. The
free version found all kinds of problems but it also found three remote
processes running (probably something my wife downloaded when she opened a
link to some website to visit some cute cartoons that her friends send to
her. Well, those three things got shut down and the computer started
speeding up and has been relatively problem free since then. I also went
online and found some helpful hints to speed up Norton- and their online
techs were helpful there too... (I had been ready to dump Norton...and
told them as much)... and they proved their worth... check out Advanced
System care by IOBIT labs- It found a bunch of stuff to fix EVEN after all
the above programs did their thing and did their best... I was amazed at
how much more stuff it found to fix- including registry defrag....
six months prior to that I was very gung ho on malware bytes- as I had
somehow gottten bitten by some java worm/trojan while on google.com...
all of a sudden- lots of ad popups- mbm found 3 registry keys and 4 dlls
infected and cleaned it up in no time.

good luck

"bayskater" wrote in message
...

Hi Daave,

Well, I dumped McAfee. After it was gone, and before installing any
other security program I tried a little net surfing.
It was quite noticeably faster. It may not be the best it can be, but if
it was this fast I would not have been chasing trouble.
I also dumped Spybot and AdAware and downloaded Microsoft Security
Essentials. Looks good. Would you recommend that I add MBAM also? or
would that be overkill? (I kept SAS).

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing McAfee.

Thanks, ... Fred

"Daave" wrote in message
...
(Replies inline.)

bayskater wrote:
I have an emachines T6520 computer with Windows XP Media Center
edition Service Pack 3 with 2.40Ghz AMD Athlon 64 processor.128 Kb
primary memory cache 512 Kb secondary memory cache. 896 Megabytes
installed memory. My c drive has 150.17 Gb free.

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some of it is
being used by your motherboard's onboard graphics card?

1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP users. But when
you start running programs that require more physical memory than you
actually have, the phenomenon of paging occurs, which can really slow a
system down! Sometimes all that is necessary is adding more RAM.

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on your
pagefile 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.

What are your figures?

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

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/

I'm up-to-date on all of Microsoft hot fixes for Windows.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Super Anti- Spyware
frequently.

AdAware and Spybot S&D were once top-notch, but they have fallen out of
favor with many. Also people running IE8 have reported problems if they
also ran Spybot (but I believe there is a fix for that). And sometimes
AdAware can muck things up performance-wise (or at least it used to).

SAS is a good anti-malware program. I would keep this one and uninstall
the other two, And definitely run MBAM.

I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found.

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I wouldn't be
surprised if all or part of your problem is because McAfee is running.
I'd uninstall it, using their removal tool if necessary:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

NOD32 is a superior program, and it is anything but a resource hog. If
you're looking for a *free* antivirus alternative, AVG, Avast, and
AntiVir are all good.

Usually when I try to defrag it says not
necessary to defrag, but a couple of days ago I did a defrag and it
did not help .

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that is, an
NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98 did). I would still
defrag, but two or three times a year is probably fine.

I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it seems like I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff running in
the back ground using up memory (or is it system resources?)

The way to determine that is by the Task Manager exercise I gave you
above. It might be too many. Or not.

The big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K

Whoah, Nelly! Uninstall that beast!!!!! (McAfee.)

explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K

I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just run it
whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall it.

sychost.exe 17,240K

In another post, I see you corrected that: svchost.exe

There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47%
up to 100%

And the top five (and their CPU usage ranges) are?

Looking at the startup tab in msconfig I see about 25 items listed.
Some I can recognize as names of programs, but most have names I
don't recognize (such as atiptaxx, PDVDserv,Zhotkey Etc..) I copied
several of the unknowns into Google searches and, mostly I found
vague descriptions and comments such as "Not dangerous, not
necessary, but recommend keeping it unless it is known to be causing
problems" I unchecked about 6 of them and don't notice any difference
in performance.

It's possible to have a whole mess of these and not have a problem with
a performance. If they are not using too many CPU cycles and if the RAM
you have is adequate (to prevent paging), you need not worry about
these. Then again, a few may be problematic. The figures will tell you.

Finally, my question:
Can anyone suggest a sensible way to approach clearing out
unnecessary stuff in my Startup and Ctl/Alt/Del list of running
processes? It would seem that if I deleted them one-at-a-time, it
would take forever and would be hard to know if taking one out had
made a difference. And, does it seem like this is a good approach to
speeding my computer up?

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance. Re-enable half.
Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it down to one.

So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If performance is just as
bad, then you know it's still the fault of the 20 remaining, so disable
10 of those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just make sure
you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft Services" so that you
don't prevent a needed service from running!

Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic exercise. If there are
programs you want to keep but would like to prevent them from
automatically starting at each boot, you really should go into each
program's preferences to accomplish this (this is the preferred way;
otherwise you might find a brand new entry for the same process (!)
appearing in msconfig after the next boot!).

In another post, you had asked about registry cleaners. This page
should explain the reason to avoid them:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp...-cleaners.html

The bottom line is that they don't offer any noticeable performance
boost. And since their use could produce a situation that is
undesirable (like not being able to boot into Windows!), they are not
recommended by most knowledgeable people.

why?

"DL" wrote in message
...
Advanced System Care = snakeoil

"myobic" wrote in message
...
I had a computer that took 30-45 seconds to start IE- it showed very
little CPU usage. Malwarebytes did not find anything, nor did Spybot S&D,
nor Spyware blaster, nor adware nor Norton. People blamed Norton, Glary
Utilities, Steven Goulds Cleanup, but then I found a great utility-
free- called Advanced System Care- found it on CNET as a download. The
free version found all kinds of problems but it also found three remote
processes running (probably something my wife downloaded when she opened a
link to some website to visit some cute cartoons that her friends send to
her. Well, those three things got shut down and the computer started
speeding up and has been relatively problem free since then. I also went
online and found some helpful hints to speed up Norton- and their online
techs were helpful there too... (I had been ready to dump Norton...and
told them as much)... and they proved their worth... check out Advanced
System care by IOBIT labs- It found a bunch of stuff to fix EVEN after all
the above programs did their thing and did their best... I was amazed at
how much more stuff it found to fix- including registry defrag....
six months prior to that I was very gung ho on malware bytes- as I had
somehow gottten bitten by some java worm/trojan while on google.com...
all of a sudden- lots of ad popups- mbm found 3 registry keys and 4 dlls
infected and cleaned it up in no time.

good luck

"bayskater" wrote in message
...

Hi Daave,

Well, I dumped McAfee. After it was gone, and before installing any
other security program I tried a little net surfing.
It was quite noticeably faster. It may not be the best it can be, but if
it was this fast I would not have been chasing trouble.
I also dumped Spybot and AdAware and downloaded Microsoft Security
Essentials. Looks good. Would you recommend that I add MBAM also? or
would that be overkill? (I kept SAS).

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing McAfee.

Thanks, ... Fred

"Daave" wrote in message
...
(Replies inline.)

bayskater wrote:
I have an emachines T6520 computer with Windows XP Media Center
edition Service Pack 3 with 2.40Ghz AMD Athlon 64 processor.128 Kb
primary memory cache 512 Kb secondary memory cache. 896 Megabytes
installed memory. My c drive has 150.17 Gb free.

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some of it is
being used by your motherboard's onboard graphics card?

1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP users. But when
you start running programs that require more physical memory than you
actually have, the phenomenon of paging occurs, which can really slow a
system down! Sometimes all that is necessary is adding more RAM.

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on your
pagefile 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.

What are your figures?

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

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/

I'm up-to-date on all of Microsoft hot fixes for Windows.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Super Anti- Spyware
frequently.

AdAware and Spybot S&D were once top-notch, but they have fallen out of
favor with many. Also people running IE8 have reported problems if they
also ran Spybot (but I believe there is a fix for that). And sometimes
AdAware can muck things up performance-wise (or at least it used to).

SAS is a good anti-malware program. I would keep this one and uninstall
the other two, And definitely run MBAM.

I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found.

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I wouldn't be
surprised if all or part of your problem is because McAfee is running.
I'd uninstall it, using their removal tool if necessary:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

NOD32 is a superior program, and it is anything but a resource hog. If
you're looking for a *free* antivirus alternative, AVG, Avast, and
AntiVir are all good.

Usually when I try to defrag it says not
necessary to defrag, but a couple of days ago I did a defrag and it
did not help .

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that is, an
NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98 did). I would still
defrag, but two or three times a year is probably fine.

I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it seems like I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff running in
the back ground using up memory (or is it system resources?)

The way to determine that is by the Task Manager exercise I gave you
above. It might be too many. Or not.

The big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K

Whoah, Nelly! Uninstall that beast!!!!! (McAfee.)

explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K

I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just run it
whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall it.

sychost.exe 17,240K

In another post, I see you corrected that: svchost.exe

There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47%
up to 100%

And the top five (and their CPU usage ranges) are?

Looking at the startup tab in msconfig I see about 25 items listed.
Some I can recognize as names of programs, but most have names I
don't recognize (such as atiptaxx, PDVDserv,Zhotkey Etc..) I copied
several of the unknowns into Google searches and, mostly I found
vague descriptions and comments such as "Not dangerous, not
necessary, but recommend keeping it unless it is known to be causing
problems" I unchecked about 6 of them and don't notice any difference
in performance.

It's possible to have a whole mess of these and not have a problem with
a performance. If they are not using too many CPU cycles and if the RAM
you have is adequate (to prevent paging), you need not worry about
these. Then again, a few may be problematic. The figures will tell you.

Finally, my question:
Can anyone suggest a sensible way to approach clearing out
unnecessary stuff in my Startup and Ctl/Alt/Del list of running
processes? It would seem that if I deleted them one-at-a-time, it
would take forever and would be hard to know if taking one out had
made a difference. And, does it seem like this is a good approach to
speeding my computer up?

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance. Re-enable half.
Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it down to one.

So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If performance is just as
bad, then you know it's still the fault of the 20 remaining, so disable
10 of those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just make sure
you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft Services" so that you
don't prevent a needed service from running!

Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic exercise. If there are
programs you want to keep but would like to prevent them from
automatically starting at each boot, you really should go into each
program's preferences to accomplish this (this is the preferred way;
otherwise you might find a brand new entry for the same process (!)
appearing in msconfig after the next boot!).

In another post, you had asked about registry cleaners. This page
should explain the reason to avoid them:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp...-cleaners.html

The bottom line is that they don't offer any noticeable performance
boost. And since their use could produce a situation that is
undesirable (like not being able to boot into Windows!), they are not
recommended by most knowledgeable people.

why what?
"Anon" wrote in message
...
why?

"DL" wrote in message
...
Advanced System Care = snakeoil

"myobic" wrote in message
...
I had a computer that took 30-45 seconds to start IE- it showed very
little CPU usage. Malwarebytes did not find anything, nor did Spybot S&D,
nor Spyware blaster, nor adware nor Norton. People blamed Norton, Glary
Utilities, Steven Goulds Cleanup, but then I found a great utility-
free- called Advanced System Care- found it on CNET as a download. The
free version found all kinds of problems but it also found three remote
processes running (probably something my wife downloaded when she opened
a link to some website to visit some cute cartoons that her friends send
to her. Well, those three things got shut down and the computer started
speeding up and has been relatively problem free since then. I also went
online and found some helpful hints to speed up Norton- and their online
techs were helpful there too... (I had been ready to dump Norton...and
told them as much)... and they proved their worth... check out Advanced
System care by IOBIT labs- It found a bunch of stuff to fix EVEN after
all the above programs did their thing and did their best... I was amazed
at how much more stuff it found to fix- including registry defrag....
six months prior to that I was very gung ho on malware bytes- as I had
somehow gottten bitten by some java worm/trojan while on google.com...
all of a sudden- lots of ad popups- mbm found 3 registry keys and 4 dlls
infected and cleaned it up in no time.

good luck

"bayskater" wrote in message
...

Hi Daave,

Well, I dumped McAfee. After it was gone, and before installing any
other security program I tried a little net surfing.
It was quite noticeably faster. It may not be the best it can be, but
if it was this fast I would not have been chasing trouble.
I also dumped Spybot and AdAware and downloaded Microsoft Security
Essentials. Looks good. Would you recommend that I add MBAM also? or
would that be overkill? (I kept SAS).

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing McAfee.

Thanks, ... Fred

"Daave" wrote in message
...
(Replies inline.)

bayskater wrote:
I have an emachines T6520 computer with Windows XP Media Center
edition Service Pack 3 with 2.40Ghz AMD Athlon 64 processor.128 Kb
primary memory cache 512 Kb secondary memory cache. 896 Megabytes
installed memory. My c drive has 150.17 Gb free.

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some of it is
being used by your motherboard's onboard graphics card?

1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP users. But when
you start running programs that require more physical memory than you
actually have, the phenomenon of paging occurs, which can really slow
a system down! Sometimes all that is necessary is adding more RAM.

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on your
pagefile 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.

What are your figures?

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

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/

I'm up-to-date on all of Microsoft hot fixes for Windows.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Super Anti- Spyware
frequently.

AdAware and Spybot S&D were once top-notch, but they have fallen out
of favor with many. Also people running IE8 have reported problems if
they also ran Spybot (but I believe there is a fix for that). And
sometimes AdAware can muck things up performance-wise (or at least it
used to).

SAS is a good anti-malware program. I would keep this one and
uninstall the other two, And definitely run MBAM.

I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found.

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I wouldn't be
surprised if all or part of your problem is because McAfee is running.
I'd uninstall it, using their removal tool if necessary:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

NOD32 is a superior program, and it is anything but a resource hog. If
you're looking for a *free* antivirus alternative, AVG, Avast, and
AntiVir are all good.

Usually when I try to defrag it says not
necessary to defrag, but a couple of days ago I did a defrag and it
did not help .

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that is, an
NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98 did). I would
still defrag, but two or three times a year is probably fine.

I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it seems like I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff running in
the back ground using up memory (or is it system resources?)

The way to determine that is by the Task Manager exercise I gave you
above. It might be too many. Or not.

The big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K

Whoah, Nelly! Uninstall that beast!!!!! (McAfee.)

explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K

I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just run it
whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall it.

sychost.exe 17,240K

In another post, I see you corrected that: svchost.exe

There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47%
up to 100%

And the top five (and their CPU usage ranges) are?

Looking at the startup tab in msconfig I see about 25 items listed.
Some I can recognize as names of programs, but most have names I
don't recognize (such as atiptaxx, PDVDserv,Zhotkey Etc..) I copied
several of the unknowns into Google searches and, mostly I found
vague descriptions and comments such as "Not dangerous, not
necessary, but recommend keeping it unless it is known to be causing
problems" I unchecked about 6 of them and don't notice any difference
in performance.

It's possible to have a whole mess of these and not have a problem
with a performance. If they are not using too many CPU cycles and if
the RAM you have is adequate (to prevent paging), you need not worry
about these. Then again, a few may be problematic. The figures will
tell you.

Finally, my question:
Can anyone suggest a sensible way to approach clearing out
unnecessary stuff in my Startup and Ctl/Alt/Del list of running
processes? It would seem that if I deleted them one-at-a-time, it
would take forever and would be hard to know if taking one out had
made a difference. And, does it seem like this is a good approach to
speeding my computer up?

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance. Re-enable half.
Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it down to one.

So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If performance is just as
bad, then you know it's still the fault of the 20 remaining, so
disable 10 of those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just make sure
you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft Services" so that you
don't prevent a needed service from running!

Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic exercise. If there
are programs you want to keep but would like to prevent them from
automatically starting at each boot, you really should go into each
program's preferences to accomplish this (this is the preferred way;
otherwise you might find a brand new entry for the same process (!)
appearing in msconfig after the next boot!).

In another post, you had asked about registry cleaners. This page
should explain the reason to avoid them:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp...-cleaners.html

The bottom line is that they don't offer any noticeable performance
boost. And since their use could produce a situation that is
undesirable (like not being able to boot into Windows!), they are not
recommended by most knowledgeable people.

why what?
"Anon" wrote in message
...
why?

"DL" wrote in message
...
Advanced System Care = snakeoil

"myobic" wrote in message
...
I had a computer that took 30-45 seconds to start IE- it showed very
little CPU usage. Malwarebytes did not find anything, nor did Spybot S&D,
nor Spyware blaster, nor adware nor Norton. People blamed Norton, Glary
Utilities, Steven Goulds Cleanup, but then I found a great utility-
free- called Advanced System Care- found it on CNET as a download. The
free version found all kinds of problems but it also found three remote
processes running (probably something my wife downloaded when she opened
a link to some website to visit some cute cartoons that her friends send
to her. Well, those three things got shut down and the computer started
speeding up and has been relatively problem free since then. I also went
online and found some helpful hints to speed up Norton- and their online
techs were helpful there too... (I had been ready to dump Norton...and
told them as much)... and they proved their worth... check out Advanced
System care by IOBIT labs- It found a bunch of stuff to fix EVEN after
all the above programs did their thing and did their best... I was amazed
at how much more stuff it found to fix- including registry defrag....
six months prior to that I was very gung ho on malware bytes- as I had
somehow gottten bitten by some java worm/trojan while on google.com...
all of a sudden- lots of ad popups- mbm found 3 registry keys and 4 dlls
infected and cleaned it up in no time.

good luck

"bayskater" wrote in message
...

Hi Daave,

Well, I dumped McAfee. After it was gone, and before installing any
other security program I tried a little net surfing.
It was quite noticeably faster. It may not be the best it can be, but
if it was this fast I would not have been chasing trouble.
I also dumped Spybot and AdAware and downloaded Microsoft Security
Essentials. Looks good. Would you recommend that I add MBAM also? or
would that be overkill? (I kept SAS).

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing McAfee.

Thanks, ... Fred

"Daave" wrote in message
...
(Replies inline.)

bayskater wrote:
I have an emachines T6520 computer with Windows XP Media Center
edition Service Pack 3 with 2.40Ghz AMD Athlon 64 processor.128 Kb
primary memory cache 512 Kb secondary memory cache. 896 Megabytes
installed memory. My c drive has 150.17 Gb free.

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some of it is
being used by your motherboard's onboard graphics card?

1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP users. But when
you start running programs that require more physical memory than you
actually have, the phenomenon of paging occurs, which can really slow
a system down! Sometimes all that is necessary is adding more RAM.

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on your
pagefile 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.

What are your figures?

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

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/

I'm up-to-date on all of Microsoft hot fixes for Windows.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Super Anti- Spyware
frequently.

AdAware and Spybot S&D were once top-notch, but they have fallen out
of favor with many. Also people running IE8 have reported problems if
they also ran Spybot (but I believe there is a fix for that). And
sometimes AdAware can muck things up performance-wise (or at least it
used to).

SAS is a good anti-malware program. I would keep this one and
uninstall the other two, And definitely run MBAM.

I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found.

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I wouldn't be
surprised if all or part of your problem is because McAfee is running.
I'd uninstall it, using their removal tool if necessary:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

NOD32 is a superior program, and it is anything but a resource hog. If
you're looking for a *free* antivirus alternative, AVG, Avast, and
AntiVir are all good.

Usually when I try to defrag it says not
necessary to defrag, but a couple of days ago I did a defrag and it
did not help .

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that is, an
NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98 did). I would
still defrag, but two or three times a year is probably fine.

I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it seems like I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff running in
the back ground using up memory (or is it system resources?)

The way to determine that is by the Task Manager exercise I gave you
above. It might be too many. Or not.

The big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K

Whoah, Nelly! Uninstall that beast!!!!! (McAfee.)

explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K

I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just run it
whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall it.

sychost.exe 17,240K

In another post, I see you corrected that: svchost.exe

There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47%
up to 100%

And the top five (and their CPU usage ranges) are?

Looking at the startup tab in msconfig I see about 25 items listed.
Some I can recognize as names of programs, but most have names I
don't recognize (such as atiptaxx, PDVDserv,Zhotkey Etc..) I copied
several of the unknowns into Google searches and, mostly I found
vague descriptions and comments such as "Not dangerous, not
necessary, but recommend keeping it unless it is known to be causing
problems" I unchecked about 6 of them and don't notice any difference
in performance.

It's possible to have a whole mess of these and not have a problem
with a performance. If they are not using too many CPU cycles and if
the RAM you have is adequate (to prevent paging), you need not worry
about these. Then again, a few may be problematic. The figures will
tell you.

Finally, my question:
Can anyone suggest a sensible way to approach clearing out
unnecessary stuff in my Startup and Ctl/Alt/Del list of running
processes? It would seem that if I deleted them one-at-a-time, it
would take forever and would be hard to know if taking one out had
made a difference. And, does it seem like this is a good approach to
speeding my computer up?

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance. Re-enable half.
Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it down to one.

So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If performance is just as
bad, then you know it's still the fault of the 20 remaining, so
disable 10 of those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just make sure
you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft Services" so that you
don't prevent a needed service from running!

Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic exercise. If there
are programs you want to keep but would like to prevent them from
automatically starting at each boot, you really should go into each
program's preferences to accomplish this (this is the preferred way;
otherwise you might find a brand new entry for the same process (!)
appearing in msconfig after the next boot!).

In another post, you had asked about registry cleaners. This page
should explain the reason to avoid them:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp...-cleaners.html

The bottom line is that they don't offer any noticeable performance
boost. And since their use could produce a situation that is
undesirable (like not being able to boot into Windows!), they are not
recommended by most knowledgeable people.

why or how: advanced system care = snake oil???


"bayskater" wrote in message
...
why what?
"Anon" wrote in message
...
why?

"DL" wrote in message
...
Advanced System Care = snakeoil

"myobic" wrote in message
...
I had a computer that took 30-45 seconds to start IE- it showed very
little CPU usage. Malwarebytes did not find anything, nor did Spybot
S&D, nor Spyware blaster, nor adware nor Norton. People blamed Norton,
Glary Utilities, Steven Goulds Cleanup, but then I found a great
utility- free- called Advanced System Care- found it on CNET as a
download. The free version found all kinds of problems but it also
found three remote processes running (probably something my wife
downloaded when she opened a link to some website to visit some cute
cartoons that her friends send to her. Well, those three things got shut
down and the computer started speeding up and has been relatively
problem free since then. I also went online and found some helpful hints
to speed up Norton- and their online techs were helpful there too... (I
had been ready to dump Norton...and told them as much)... and they
proved their worth... check out Advanced System care by IOBIT labs- It
found a bunch of stuff to fix EVEN after all the above programs did
their thing and did their best... I was amazed at how much more stuff it
found to fix- including registry defrag....
six months prior to that I was very gung ho on malware bytes- as I had
somehow gottten bitten by some java worm/trojan while on google.com...
all of a sudden- lots of ad popups- mbm found 3 registry keys and 4
dlls infected and cleaned it up in no time.

good luck

"bayskater" wrote in message
...

Hi Daave,

Well, I dumped McAfee. After it was gone, and before installing any
other security program I tried a little net surfing.
It was quite noticeably faster. It may not be the best it can be, but
if it was this fast I would not have been chasing trouble.
I also dumped Spybot and AdAware and downloaded Microsoft Security
Essentials. Looks good. Would you recommend that I add MBAM also? or
would that be overkill? (I kept SAS).

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing McAfee.

Thanks, ... Fred

"Daave" wrote in message
...
(Replies inline.)

bayskater wrote:
I have an emachines T6520 computer with Windows XP Media Center
edition Service Pack 3 with 2.40Ghz AMD Athlon 64 processor.128 Kb
primary memory cache 512 Kb secondary memory cache. 896 Megabytes
installed memory. My c drive has 150.17 Gb free.

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some of it is
being used by your motherboard's onboard graphics card?

1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP users. But
when you start running programs that require more physical memory
than you actually have, the phenomenon of paging occurs, which can
really slow a system down! Sometimes all that is necessary is adding
more RAM.

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on your
pagefile 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.

What are your figures?

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

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/

I'm up-to-date on all of Microsoft hot fixes for Windows.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Super Anti- Spyware
frequently.

AdAware and Spybot S&D were once top-notch, but they have fallen out
of favor with many. Also people running IE8 have reported problems if
they also ran Spybot (but I believe there is a fix for that). And
sometimes AdAware can muck things up performance-wise (or at least it
used to).

SAS is a good anti-malware program. I would keep this one and
uninstall the other two, And definitely run MBAM.

I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found.

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I wouldn't be
surprised if all or part of your problem is because McAfee is
running. I'd uninstall it, using their removal tool if necessary:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

NOD32 is a superior program, and it is anything but a resource hog.
If you're looking for a *free* antivirus alternative, AVG, Avast, and
AntiVir are all good.

Usually when I try to defrag it says not
necessary to defrag, but a couple of days ago I did a defrag and it
did not help .

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that is, an
NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98 did). I would
still defrag, but two or three times a year is probably fine.

I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it seems like
I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff running in
the back ground using up memory (or is it system resources?)

The way to determine that is by the Task Manager exercise I gave you
above. It might be too many. Or not.

The big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K

Whoah, Nelly! Uninstall that beast!!!!! (McAfee.)

explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K

I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just run it
whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall it.

sychost.exe 17,240K

In another post, I see you corrected that: svchost.exe

There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47%
up to 100%

And the top five (and their CPU usage ranges) are?

Looking at the startup tab in msconfig I see about 25 items listed.
Some I can recognize as names of programs, but most have names I
don't recognize (such as atiptaxx, PDVDserv,Zhotkey Etc..) I copied
several of the unknowns into Google searches and, mostly I found
vague descriptions and comments such as "Not dangerous, not
necessary, but recommend keeping it unless it is known to be causing
problems" I unchecked about 6 of them and don't notice any
difference
in performance.

It's possible to have a whole mess of these and not have a problem
with a performance. If they are not using too many CPU cycles and if
the RAM you have is adequate (to prevent paging), you need not worry
about these. Then again, a few may be problematic. The figures will
tell you.

Finally, my question:
Can anyone suggest a sensible way to approach clearing out
unnecessary stuff in my Startup and Ctl/Alt/Del list of running
processes? It would seem that if I deleted them one-at-a-time, it
would take forever and would be hard to know if taking one out had
made a difference. And, does it seem like this is a good approach to
speeding my computer up?

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance. Re-enable
half. Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it down to one.

So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If performance is just as
bad, then you know it's still the fault of the 20 remaining, so
disable 10 of those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just make sure
you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft Services" so that you
don't prevent a needed service from running!

Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic exercise. If there
are programs you want to keep but would like to prevent them from
automatically starting at each boot, you really should go into each
program's preferences to accomplish this (this is the preferred way;
otherwise you might find a brand new entry for the same process (!)
appearing in msconfig after the next boot!).

In another post, you had asked about registry cleaners. This page
should explain the reason to avoid them:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp...-cleaners.html

The bottom line is that they don't offer any noticeable performance
boost. And since their use could produce a situation that is
undesirable (like not being able to boot into Windows!), they are not
recommended by most knowledgeable people.

why or how: advanced system care = snake oil???


"bayskater" wrote in message
...
why what?
"Anon" wrote in message
...
why?

"DL" wrote in message
...
Advanced System Care = snakeoil

"myobic" wrote in message
...
I had a computer that took 30-45 seconds to start IE- it showed very
little CPU usage. Malwarebytes did not find anything, nor did Spybot
S&D, nor Spyware blaster, nor adware nor Norton. People blamed Norton,
Glary Utilities, Steven Goulds Cleanup, but then I found a great
utility- free- called Advanced System Care- found it on CNET as a
download. The free version found all kinds of problems but it also
found three remote processes running (probably something my wife
downloaded when she opened a link to some website to visit some cute
cartoons that her friends send to her. Well, those three things got shut
down and the computer started speeding up and has been relatively
problem free since then. I also went online and found some helpful hints
to speed up Norton- and their online techs were helpful there too... (I
had been ready to dump Norton...and told them as much)... and they
proved their worth... check out Advanced System care by IOBIT labs- It
found a bunch of stuff to fix EVEN after all the above programs did
their thing and did their best... I was amazed at how much more stuff it
found to fix- including registry defrag....
six months prior to that I was very gung ho on malware bytes- as I had
somehow gottten bitten by some java worm/trojan while on google.com...
all of a sudden- lots of ad popups- mbm found 3 registry keys and 4
dlls infected and cleaned it up in no time.

good luck

"bayskater" wrote in message
...

Hi Daave,

Well, I dumped McAfee. After it was gone, and before installing any
other security program I tried a little net surfing.
It was quite noticeably faster. It may not be the best it can be, but
if it was this fast I would not have been chasing trouble.
I also dumped Spybot and AdAware and downloaded Microsoft Security
Essentials. Looks good. Would you recommend that I add MBAM also? or
would that be overkill? (I kept SAS).

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing McAfee.

Thanks, ... Fred

"Daave" wrote in message
...
(Replies inline.)

bayskater wrote:
I have an emachines T6520 computer with Windows XP Media Center
edition Service Pack 3 with 2.40Ghz AMD Athlon 64 processor.128 Kb
primary memory cache 512 Kb secondary memory cache. 896 Megabytes
installed memory. My c drive has 150.17 Gb free.

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some of it is
being used by your motherboard's onboard graphics card?

1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP users. But
when you start running programs that require more physical memory
than you actually have, the phenomenon of paging occurs, which can
really slow a system down! Sometimes all that is necessary is adding
more RAM.

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on your
pagefile 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.

What are your figures?

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

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/

I'm up-to-date on all of Microsoft hot fixes for Windows.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Super Anti- Spyware
frequently.

AdAware and Spybot S&D were once top-notch, but they have fallen out
of favor with many. Also people running IE8 have reported problems if
they also ran Spybot (but I believe there is a fix for that). And
sometimes AdAware can muck things up performance-wise (or at least it
used to).

SAS is a good anti-malware program. I would keep this one and
uninstall the other two, And definitely run MBAM.

I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found.

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I wouldn't be
surprised if all or part of your problem is because McAfee is
running. I'd uninstall it, using their removal tool if necessary:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

NOD32 is a superior program, and it is anything but a resource hog.
If you're looking for a *free* antivirus alternative, AVG, Avast, and
AntiVir are all good.

Usually when I try to defrag it says not
necessary to defrag, but a couple of days ago I did a defrag and it
did not help .

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that is, an
NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98 did). I would
still defrag, but two or three times a year is probably fine.

I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it seems like
I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff running in
the back ground using up memory (or is it system resources?)

The way to determine that is by the Task Manager exercise I gave you
above. It might be too many. Or not.

The big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K

Whoah, Nelly! Uninstall that beast!!!!! (McAfee.)

explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K

I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just run it
whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall it.

sychost.exe 17,240K

In another post, I see you corrected that: svchost.exe

There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47%
up to 100%

And the top five (and their CPU usage ranges) are?

Looking at the startup tab in msconfig I see about 25 items listed.
Some I can recognize as names of programs, but most have names I
don't recognize (such as atiptaxx, PDVDserv,Zhotkey Etc..) I copied
several of the unknowns into Google searches and, mostly I found
vague descriptions and comments such as "Not dangerous, not
necessary, but recommend keeping it unless it is known to be causing
problems" I unchecked about 6 of them and don't notice any
difference
in performance.

It's possible to have a whole mess of these and not have a problem
with a performance. If they are not using too many CPU cycles and if
the RAM you have is adequate (to prevent paging), you need not worry
about these. Then again, a few may be problematic. The figures will
tell you.

Finally, my question:
Can anyone suggest a sensible way to approach clearing out
unnecessary stuff in my Startup and Ctl/Alt/Del list of running
processes? It would seem that if I deleted them one-at-a-time, it
would take forever and would be hard to know if taking one out had
made a difference. And, does it seem like this is a good approach to
speeding my computer up?

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance. Re-enable
half. Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it down to one.

So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If performance is just as
bad, then you know it's still the fault of the 20 remaining, so
disable 10 of those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just make sure
you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft Services" so that you
don't prevent a needed service from running!

Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic exercise. If there
are programs you want to keep but would like to prevent them from
automatically starting at each boot, you really should go into each
program's preferences to accomplish this (this is the preferred way;
otherwise you might find a brand new entry for the same process (!)
appearing in msconfig after the next boot!).

In another post, you had asked about registry cleaners. This page
should explain the reason to avoid them:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp...-cleaners.html

The bottom line is that they don't offer any noticeable performance
boost. And since their use could produce a situation that is
undesirable (like not being able to boot into Windows!), they are not
recommended by most knowledgeable people.

advanced system care = snake oil???

Those were not my words. If it says that in the thread somewhere it must
have been said by one of those responding to my question.
Fred
================================================== ===========
"Anon" wrote in message
...
why or how: advanced system care = snake oil???


"bayskater" wrote in message
...
why what?
"Anon" wrote in message
...
why?

"DL" wrote in message
...
Advanced System Care = snakeoil

"myobic" wrote in message
...
I had a computer that took 30-45 seconds to start IE- it showed very
little CPU usage. Malwarebytes did not find anything, nor did Spybot
S&D, nor Spyware blaster, nor adware nor Norton. People blamed Norton,
Glary Utilities, Steven Goulds Cleanup, but then I found a great
utility- free- called Advanced System Care- found it on CNET as a
download. The free version found all kinds of problems but it also
found three remote processes running (probably something my wife
downloaded when she opened a link to some website to visit some cute
cartoons that her friends send to her. Well, those three things got
shut down and the computer started speeding up and has been relatively
problem free since then. I also went online and found some helpful
hints to speed up Norton- and their online techs were helpful there
too... (I had been ready to dump Norton...and told them as much)... and
they proved their worth... check out Advanced System care by IOBIT
labs- It found a bunch of stuff to fix EVEN after all the above
programs did their thing and did their best... I was amazed at how much
more stuff it found to fix- including registry defrag....
six months prior to that I was very gung ho on malware bytes- as I had
somehow gottten bitten by some java worm/trojan while on
google.com... all of a sudden- lots of ad popups- mbm found 3 registry
keys and 4 dlls infected and cleaned it up in no time.

good luck

"bayskater" wrote in message
...

Hi Daave,

Well, I dumped McAfee. After it was gone, and before installing any
other security program I tried a little net surfing.
It was quite noticeably faster. It may not be the best it can be, but
if it was this fast I would not have been chasing trouble.
I also dumped Spybot and AdAware and downloaded Microsoft Security
Essentials. Looks good. Would you recommend that I add MBAM also? or
would that be overkill? (I kept SAS).

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing McAfee.

Thanks, ... Fred

"Daave" wrote in message
...
(Replies inline.)

bayskater wrote:
I have an emachines T6520 computer with Windows XP Media Center
edition Service Pack 3 with 2.40Ghz AMD Athlon 64 processor.128 Kb
primary memory cache 512 Kb secondary memory cache. 896 Megabytes
installed memory. My c drive has 150.17 Gb free.

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some of it is
being used by your motherboard's onboard graphics card?

1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP users. But
when you start running programs that require more physical memory
than you actually have, the phenomenon of paging occurs, which can
really slow a system down! Sometimes all that is necessary is adding
more RAM.

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on your
pagefile 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.

What are your figures?

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

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/

I'm up-to-date on all of Microsoft hot fixes for Windows.
I use AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Super Anti- Spyware
frequently.

AdAware and Spybot S&D were once top-notch, but they have fallen out
of favor with many. Also people running IE8 have reported problems
if they also ran Spybot (but I believe there is a fix for that). And
sometimes AdAware can muck things up performance-wise (or at least
it used to).

SAS is a good anti-malware program. I would keep this one and
uninstall the other two, And definitely run MBAM.

I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found.

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I wouldn't be
surprised if all or part of your problem is because McAfee is
running. I'd uninstall it, using their removal tool if necessary:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

NOD32 is a superior program, and it is anything but a resource hog.
If you're looking for a *free* antivirus alternative, AVG, Avast,
and AntiVir are all good.

Usually when I try to defrag it says not
necessary to defrag, but a couple of days ago I did a defrag and it
did not help .

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that is, an
NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98 did). I would
still defrag, but two or three times a year is probably fine.

I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it seems like
I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff running in
the back ground using up memory (or is it system resources?)

The way to determine that is by the Task Manager exercise I gave you
above. It might be too many. Or not.

The big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K

Whoah, Nelly! Uninstall that beast!!!!! (McAfee.)

explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K

I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just run it
whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall it.

sychost.exe 17,240K

In another post, I see you corrected that: svchost.exe

There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about
47%
up to 100%

And the top five (and their CPU usage ranges) are?

Looking at the startup tab in msconfig I see about 25 items listed.
Some I can recognize as names of programs, but most have names I
don't recognize (such as atiptaxx, PDVDserv,Zhotkey Etc..) I copied
several of the unknowns into Google searches and, mostly I found
vague descriptions and comments such as "Not dangerous, not
necessary, but recommend keeping it unless it is known to be
causing
problems" I unchecked about 6 of them and don't notice any
difference
in performance.

It's possible to have a whole mess of these and not have a problem
with a performance. If they are not using too many CPU cycles and if
the RAM you have is adequate (to prevent paging), you need not worry
about these. Then again, a few may be problematic. The figures will
tell you.

Finally, my question:
Can anyone suggest a sensible way to approach clearing out
unnecessary stuff in my Startup and Ctl/Alt/Del list of running
processes? It would seem that if I deleted them one-at-a-time, it
would take forever and would be hard to know if taking one out had
made a difference. And, does it seem like this is a good approach
to
speeding my computer up?

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance. Re-enable
half. Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it down to one.

So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If performance is just as
bad, then you know it's still the fault of the 20 remaining, so
disable 10 of those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just make
sure you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft Services" so that
you don't prevent a needed service from running!

Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic exercise. If there
are programs you want to keep but would like to prevent them from
automatically starting at each boot, you really should go into each
program's preferences to accomplish this (this is the preferred way;
otherwise you might find a brand new entry for the same process (!)
appearing in msconfig after the next boot!).

In another post, you had asked about registry cleaners. This page
should explain the reason to avoid them:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp...-cleaners.html

The bottom line is that they don't offer any noticeable performance
boost. And since their use could produce a situation that is
undesirable (like not being able to boot into Windows!), they are
not recommended by most knowledgeable people.