Computer has slowed way down

"Richard Urban" wrote in message
...
"bayskater" wrote in message
...

"Richard Urban" wrote in message
...
"bayskater" wrote in message
...
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.

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. I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found. 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 .
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 big users
of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K
explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K
sychost.exe 17,240K
There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47% up
to 100%

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.

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?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

Fred




If it were my computer, and I wanted to speed it up, I would uninstall
McAfee. I would not substitute Symantec/Norton in its place.

There are many decent antivirus/anti malware programs that are free
even.

Avast FREE: http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

AVG FREE: http://www.avg.com/us-en/download?prd=afg

Microsoft Security Essentials:
http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

Threatfi http://www.threatfire.com/

MalwareBytes Anti Malwa http://www.malwarebytes.org/

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience & Security

The more I read about computer slowness problems, the more confusing it
gets.
Searching for user comments on the free programs listed above showed all
of them are knocked by at least some of the users.
Lots of advice to Clean my registry and lots more to beware of registry
cleaners.
The McAfee program I'm using is offered free to Comcast customers. I
abandoned Norton/Symantec years ago and would never go back to it.
One site even advised backing up everything and re-installing XP.
Any thoughts on my question about using "disk cleanup" in Windows System
Tools?
How about "end process" for all my running processes?
What pgms do I really NEED in my Startup?
What really NEEDS to be running in the background?
Maybe I should just learn to love my slow computer?

Any experience with Uniblue Registry Booster program?

Thanks, ... Fred






Please, for your sanity, forget about using any registry tools except for
the tool included with the operating system. It is a manual tool and, if
you don't know or research what you plan to do in the registry - you
shouldn't be in there!

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience & Security

T hanks, Richard
I can see now that I've opened a can of worms. I'll proceed cautiously and
not ask for advice for any shortcuts.
I'll dump McAfee when I find something to replace it that looks like I can
have confidence in it. Apparently you feel that that's the answer to my
problems. At least I've learned where the notification area is and that
there is such a thing as a registry tool included in the operating system.
(and if I ever come across it NOT to use it).

Fred

"Richard Urban" wrote in message
...
"bayskater" wrote in message
...

"Richard Urban" wrote in message
...
"bayskater" wrote in message
...
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.

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. I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found. 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 .
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 big users
of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K
explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K
sychost.exe 17,240K
There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47% up
to 100%

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.

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?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

Fred




If it were my computer, and I wanted to speed it up, I would uninstall
McAfee. I would not substitute Symantec/Norton in its place.

There are many decent antivirus/anti malware programs that are free
even.

Avast FREE: http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

AVG FREE: http://www.avg.com/us-en/download?prd=afg

Microsoft Security Essentials:
http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

Threatfi http://www.threatfire.com/

MalwareBytes Anti Malwa http://www.malwarebytes.org/

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience & Security

The more I read about computer slowness problems, the more confusing it
gets.
Searching for user comments on the free programs listed above showed all
of them are knocked by at least some of the users.
Lots of advice to Clean my registry and lots more to beware of registry
cleaners.
The McAfee program I'm using is offered free to Comcast customers. I
abandoned Norton/Symantec years ago and would never go back to it.
One site even advised backing up everything and re-installing XP.
Any thoughts on my question about using "disk cleanup" in Windows System
Tools?
How about "end process" for all my running processes?
What pgms do I really NEED in my Startup?
What really NEEDS to be running in the background?
Maybe I should just learn to love my slow computer?

Any experience with Uniblue Registry Booster program?

Thanks, ... Fred






Please, for your sanity, forget about using any registry tools except for
the tool included with the operating system. It is a manual tool and, if
you don't know or research what you plan to do in the registry - you
shouldn't be in there!

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience & Security

T hanks, Richard
I can see now that I've opened a can of worms. I'll proceed cautiously and
not ask for advice for any shortcuts.
I'll dump McAfee when I find something to replace it that looks like I can
have confidence in it. Apparently you feel that that's the answer to my
problems. At least I've learned where the notification area is and that
there is such a thing as a registry tool included in the operating system.
(and if I ever come across it NOT to use it).

Fred

(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.

(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
...

"Richard Urban" wrote in message
...
"bayskater" wrote in message
...

"Richard Urban" wrote in message
...
"bayskater" wrote in message
...
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.

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. I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found. 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 .
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 big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K
explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K
sychost.exe 17,240K
There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47%
up to 100%

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.

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?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

Fred




If it were my computer, and I wanted to speed it up, I would uninstall
McAfee. I would not substitute Symantec/Norton in its place.

There are many decent antivirus/anti malware programs that are free
even.

Avast FREE: http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

AVG FREE: http://www.avg.com/us-en/download?prd=afg

Microsoft Security Essentials:
http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

Threatfi http://www.threatfire.com/

MalwareBytes Anti Malwa http://www.malwarebytes.org/

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience & Security

The more I read about computer slowness problems, the more confusing it
gets.
Searching for user comments on the free programs listed above showed all
of them are knocked by at least some of the users.
Lots of advice to Clean my registry and lots more to beware of registry
cleaners.
The McAfee program I'm using is offered free to Comcast customers. I
abandoned Norton/Symantec years ago and would never go back to it.
One site even advised backing up everything and re-installing XP.
Any thoughts on my question about using "disk cleanup" in Windows System
Tools?
How about "end process" for all my running processes?
What pgms do I really NEED in my Startup?
What really NEEDS to be running in the background?
Maybe I should just learn to love my slow computer?

Any experience with Uniblue Registry Booster program?

Thanks, ... Fred






Please, for your sanity, forget about using any registry tools except for
the tool included with the operating system. It is a manual tool and, if
you don't know or research what you plan to do in the registry - you
shouldn't be in there!

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience & Security

T hanks, Richard
I can see now that I've opened a can of worms. I'll proceed cautiously and
not ask for advice for any shortcuts.
I'll dump McAfee when I find something to replace it that looks like I can
have confidence in it. Apparently you feel that that's the answer to my
problems. At least I've learned where the notification area is and that
there is such a thing as a registry tool included in the operating system.
(and if I ever come across it NOT to use it).

Fred






More people than I can count have destroyed their computer (turned it into a
paper weight) by careless changes to the registry either manually, or by
registry cleaners.

As far as anti virus goes, please give Microsoft Security Essentials a
chance. I have put it on all of my families computers and on the computers
of my friends and customers. I have not had a complaint yet.

And yes, McAfee DOES slow down the computer that much!

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience & Security

"bayskater" wrote in message
...

"Richard Urban" wrote in message
...
"bayskater" wrote in message
...

"Richard Urban" wrote in message
...
"bayskater" wrote in message
...
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.

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. I have McAfee Security system and recently ran a complete
scan with no troubles found. 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 .
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 big
users of memory (using CAD) a
iexplore.exe 23,088K
msimn.exe 54,900K
msntask.exe 38,544K
Mcshield.exe 101,124K
explorer.exe 15,348K
AAWService.exe 18,480K
sychost.exe 17,240K
There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47%
up to 100%

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.

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?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

Fred




If it were my computer, and I wanted to speed it up, I would uninstall
McAfee. I would not substitute Symantec/Norton in its place.

There are many decent antivirus/anti malware programs that are free
even.

Avast FREE: http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

AVG FREE: http://www.avg.com/us-en/download?prd=afg

Microsoft Security Essentials:
http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

Threatfi http://www.threatfire.com/

MalwareBytes Anti Malwa http://www.malwarebytes.org/

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience & Security

The more I read about computer slowness problems, the more confusing it
gets.
Searching for user comments on the free programs listed above showed all
of them are knocked by at least some of the users.
Lots of advice to Clean my registry and lots more to beware of registry
cleaners.
The McAfee program I'm using is offered free to Comcast customers. I
abandoned Norton/Symantec years ago and would never go back to it.
One site even advised backing up everything and re-installing XP.
Any thoughts on my question about using "disk cleanup" in Windows System
Tools?
How about "end process" for all my running processes?
What pgms do I really NEED in my Startup?
What really NEEDS to be running in the background?
Maybe I should just learn to love my slow computer?

Any experience with Uniblue Registry Booster program?

Thanks, ... Fred






Please, for your sanity, forget about using any registry tools except for
the tool included with the operating system. It is a manual tool and, if
you don't know or research what you plan to do in the registry - you
shouldn't be in there!

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience & Security

T hanks, Richard
I can see now that I've opened a can of worms. I'll proceed cautiously and
not ask for advice for any shortcuts.
I'll dump McAfee when I find something to replace it that looks like I can
have confidence in it. Apparently you feel that that's the answer to my
problems. At least I've learned where the notification area is and that
there is such a thing as a registry tool included in the operating system.
(and if I ever come across it NOT to use it).

Fred






More people than I can count have destroyed their computer (turned it into a
paper weight) by careless changes to the registry either manually, or by
registry cleaners.

As far as anti virus goes, please give Microsoft Security Essentials a
chance. I have put it on all of my families computers and on the computers
of my friends and customers. I have not had a complaint yet.

And yes, McAfee DOES slow down the computer that much!

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience & Security

Thanks a lot Daave. I've inserted a few replies into your message below.
"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?
===============================================

Commit Charge (K)
Total 492644
Limit 2216992 (less than an hour since last reboot)
Peak 745692
896 Megabytes installed memory

Above was while sitting on this newsgroup.
When I went up to a web page these figures appeared:

Total 582096
Limit 2216992
Peak 745692
==============================================

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/

================================================== ===

As you said ... Whoa Nellie!
The above stuff is over my head. I'm an 80 y/o two-fingered duffer.
I downloaded the page file monitor and when I opened the read-only file I
lost whatever little bit of courage I had.
even to delete the downloaded file may involve having intercourse with my
registry.
I'll respectfully pass on that scientific stuff anf get about dumping my
McAfee.
Stay tuned.
================================================== ====


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?
================================================== =
I think I misstated that - another responder had me look at the Processes
tab and said that when the computer is idle the only process that should
show more tha zero is the System Idle Process. I replied that was so. There
are 56 processes listed with CPU usages varying from about 47% up to 100%
The 47% and 100% came from the CPU usage at the bottom of the task mgr.
page. It was a changing % that varied from a low of 47% up to a high of 100%
( no top five)
================================================== ===

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

bayskater wrote:
Thanks a lot Daave. I've inserted a few replies into your message
below. "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?
===============================================

Commit Charge (K)
Total 492644
Limit 2216992 (less than an hour since last reboot)
Peak 745692
896 Megabytes installed memory

Above was while sitting on this newsgroup.
When I went up to a web page these figures appeared:

Total 582096
Limit 2216992
Peak 745692
==============================================


896MB = 917,504KB. Since your peak figure never exceeds that, this means
you have plenty of RAM. I wouldn't even bother with the Page File
Monitor program. So, good news! No need to install more RAM. :-)


In case you want to explore this further, you may run Page File
Monitor for Windows XP:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

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/

================================================== ===

As you said ... Whoa Nellie!
The above stuff is over my head. I'm an 80 y/o two-fingered duffer.
I downloaded the page file monitor and when I opened the read-only
file I lost whatever little bit of courage I had.
even to delete the downloaded file may involve having intercourse
with my registry.

LOL

Don't worry about it. Like I said, I'm sure you have plenty of RAM.

I'll respectfully pass on that scientific stuff anf get about dumping
my McAfee.
Stay tuned.
================================================== ====

That will improve your performace in a BIG way!

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?
================================================== =
I think I misstated that - another responder had me look at the
Processes tab and said that when the computer is idle the only
process that should show more tha zero is the System Idle Process. I
replied that was so. There are 56 processes listed with CPU usages
varying from about 47% up to 100% The 47% and 100% came from the CPU
usage at the bottom of the task mgr. page. It was a changing % that
varied from a low of 47% up to a high of 100% ( no top five)
================================================== ===

If you wanted to, you could sort by CPU usage. I'd wager that McAfee
would be at at toward the top.

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:
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:
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.

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.