Computer has slowed way down

Those were DL's words, and Anon was addressing him and not you.

bayskater wrote:
advanced system care = snake oil???

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


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

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

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

good luck

"bayskater" wrote in message
...

Hi Daave,

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

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing
McAfee. Thanks, ... Fred

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

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

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

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

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

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on your
pagefile is to open Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the
Performance tab. Then note the three values under Commit
Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit, and
Peak. The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are
using
at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of
memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the
value of Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have
plenty of RAM. What are your figures?

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

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

You might also want to check that your hard drive's access mode
didn't change from DMA to PIO:

http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/i...while-copying/

and

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

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

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

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

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

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I
wouldn't be surprised if all or part of your problem is
because McAfee is running. I'd uninstall it, using their
removal tool if necessary:
http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

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

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

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that
is, an NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98
did). I would still defrag, but two or three times a year is
probably fine.
I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it
seems like I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff
running in the back ground using up memory (or is it system
resources?)

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

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

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

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

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

sychost.exe 17,240K

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

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

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

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

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

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

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance.
Re-enable half. Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it
down to one. So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If
performance is
just as bad, then you know it's still the fault of the 20
remaining, so disable 10 of those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just
make sure you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft
Services" so that you don't prevent a needed service from
running! Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic
exercise. If
there are programs you want to keep but would like to prevent
them from automatically starting at each boot, you really
should go into each program's preferences to accomplish this
(this is the preferred way; otherwise you might find a brand
new entry for the same process (!) appearing in msconfig after
the next boot!). In another post, you had asked about registry
cleaners. This
page should explain the reason to avoid them:

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

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

Thanks, Daave.

Fred
=========================
"Daave" wrote in message
...
Those were DL's words, and Anon was addressing him and not you.

bayskater wrote:
advanced system care = snake oil???

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


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

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

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

good luck

"bayskater" wrote in message
...

Hi Daave,

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

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing
McAfee. Thanks, ... Fred

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

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

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

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

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

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on your
pagefile is to open Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the
Performance tab. Then note the three values under Commit
Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit, and
Peak. The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are
using
at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of
memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the
value of Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have
plenty of RAM. What are your figures?

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

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

You might also want to check that your hard drive's access mode
didn't change from DMA to PIO:

http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/i...while-copying/

and

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

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

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

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

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

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I
wouldn't be surprised if all or part of your problem is
because McAfee is running. I'd uninstall it, using their
removal tool if necessary:
http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

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

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

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that
is, an NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98
did). I would still defrag, but two or three times a year is
probably fine.
I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it
seems like I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff
running in the back ground using up memory (or is it system
resources?)

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

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

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

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

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

sychost.exe 17,240K

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

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

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

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

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

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

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance.
Re-enable half. Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it
down to one. So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If
performance is
just as bad, then you know it's still the fault of the 20
remaining, so disable 10 of those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just
make sure you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft
Services" so that you don't prevent a needed service from
running! Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic
exercise. If
there are programs you want to keep but would like to prevent
them from automatically starting at each boot, you really
should go into each program's preferences to accomplish this
(this is the preferred way; otherwise you might find a brand
new entry for the same process (!) appearing in msconfig after
the next boot!). In another post, you had asked about registry
cleaners. This
page should explain the reason to avoid them:

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

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

Any time, Fred.

bayskater wrote:
Thanks, Daave.

Fred
=========================
"Daave" wrote in message
...
Those were DL's words, and Anon was addressing him and not you.

bayskater wrote:
advanced system care = snake oil???

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


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

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

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

good luck

"bayskater" wrote in message
...

Hi Daave,

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

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

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

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

896MB is a weird figure. Might you have 1GB of RAM and some
of it is being used by your motherboard's onboard graphics
card? 1GB (or 896MB) is usually more than enough for most XP
users.
But when you start running programs that require more
physical memory than you actually have, the phenomenon of
paging occurs, which can really slow a system down!
Sometimes all that is necessary is adding more RAM.

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on
your pagefile is to open Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and
click the Performance tab. Then note the three values under
Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total,
Limit, and Peak. The Total figure represents the amount of
memory you are using
at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of
memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the
value of Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have
plenty of RAM. What are your figures?

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

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

You might also want to check that your hard drive's access
mode didn't change from DMA to PIO:

http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/i...while-copying/

and

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

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

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

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

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

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I
wouldn't be surprised if all or part of your problem is
because McAfee is running. I'd uninstall it, using their
removal tool if necessary:
http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

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

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

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that
is, an NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98
did). I would still defrag, but two or three times a year is
probably fine.
I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it
seems like I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff
running in the back ground using up memory (or is it system
resources?)

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

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

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

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

I see no reason for AdAware to have a startup process. Just
run it whenever *you* want to do so. Better yet, uninstall
it.
sychost.exe 17,240K

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

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

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

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

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

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

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance.
Re-enable half. Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it
down to one. So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If
performance is
just as bad, then you know it's still the fault of the 20
remaining, so disable 10 of those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just
make sure you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft
Services" so that you don't prevent a needed service from
running! Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic
exercise. If
there are programs you want to keep but would like to prevent
them from automatically starting at each boot, you really
should go into each program's preferences to accomplish this
(this is the preferred way; otherwise you might find a brand
new entry for the same process (!) appearing in msconfig
after the next boot!). In another post, you had asked about
registry cleaners. This
page should explain the reason to avoid them:

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

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

I realize that everyone- sorry the thread is getting confusing,

I was simply answering the "Why-What" comment from earlier in the thread.
regarding how advanced system care was determined to be snake oil. i did
not mean to infer that bayskater said it, just replying to his inquiry.

Again- sorry for the confusion.

Thanks

Anon


"Daave" wrote in message
...
Those were DL's words, and Anon was addressing him and not you.

bayskater wrote:
advanced system care = snake oil???

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


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

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

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

good luck

"bayskater" wrote in message
...

Hi Daave,

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

My thanks also to Richard Urban who also suggested removing
McAfee. Thanks, ... Fred

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

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

Have you installed all the latest Windows critical updates?

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

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

A quick way to determine if you are relying too heavily on your
pagefile is to open Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the
Performance tab. Then note the three values under Commit
Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit, and
Peak. The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are
using
at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of
memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the
value of Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have
plenty of RAM. What are your figures?

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

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

You might also want to check that your hard drive's access mode
didn't change from DMA to PIO:

http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/i...while-copying/

and

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

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

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

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

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

Both McAfee and Norton are well-known resource hogs. I
wouldn't be surprised if all or part of your problem is
because McAfee is running. I'd uninstall it, using their
removal tool if necessary:
http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

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

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

Defragging isn't as important to Windows as it once was (that
is, an NT-based OS like XP doesn't need it like Windows 98
did). I would still defrag, but two or three times a year is
probably fine.
I'm far from being an expert, but from what I've read it
seems like I
may have too many programs on Startup and too much stuff
running in the back ground using up memory (or is it system
resources?)

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

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

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

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

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

sychost.exe 17,240K

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

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

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

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

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

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

Use the halving method. Disable all. Note performance.
Re-enable half. Note any changes. Repeat until you narrow it
down to one. So, say you have 40 programs. Disable 20. If
performance is
just as bad, then you know it's still the fault of the 20
remaining, so disable 10 of those, etc.

You can do the same with services in the Services Tab. Just
make sure you check the box next to "Hide All Microsoft
Services" so that you don't prevent a needed service from
running! Keep in mind that using msconfig is a diagnostic
exercise. If
there are programs you want to keep but would like to prevent
them from automatically starting at each boot, you really
should go into each program's preferences to accomplish this
(this is the preferred way; otherwise you might find a brand
new entry for the same process (!) appearing in msconfig after
the next boot!). In another post, you had asked about registry
cleaners. This
page should explain the reason to avoid them:

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

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