home XP slow and goopy

[Nitro]

i'm running XP home on a sony VAIO laptop. had it for about 3 years. it's
running slower and slower all the time. boot is slower. little right-click
context menu moves w the mouse can take forever. i click on "desktop" icon
in a file-save dialog and it literally takes 5 seconds for dktop to appear
in browser.

minimize all windows and the desktop appears in slow bands. the desktop
icons blink on one-by-one almost (have about 30).

i dread updating windows (turn it off mostly) because at every update my
laptop runs slower. granted, i've installed more app's with more TSR's, but
i recently nuked a huge bunch of them, including all the Sony Vaio crap. i
switched off a bunch of useless services. I nuked all the startup items I
could in msconfig.

i recently changed my pagefile from 1.5x ram (static size) to "system
managed", thinking that windows great intelligence would prevail. not so.
still slow and goopy.

so... if anyone can help tell me "what up doc" with this goopy slow
computer, i would be grateful.

thanks

 

[Steve Hayes]

i dread updating windows (turn it off mostly) because at every update my
laptop runs slower. granted, i've installed more app's with more TSR's, but
i recently nuked a huge bunch of them, including all the Sony Vaio crap. i
switched off a bunch of useless services. I nuked all the startup items I
could in msconfig.

I have the same problem.

In addition, at times it takes not 5 second, but 5 minutes for a response,
because sometimes the hard disk starts churning for no apparent reason and the
system stops responding. At that point I press the off button and let it
reboot (it takes about 20-30 minute).

I don't know what "process" is causing this. There's nop obvious program
running. I've got things that show "processes" that load at startup, but since
they don't say what they do, I don't want to zap thenm in case they do
something I want. If there were a process labelled "make the hard disk church
and stop the computer responding" then I could zap it, but none of them says
that.

I don't like switching it off and rebooting if there are lots of programs open
because sometimes one can lose data that way, but closining the programs at 5
minutes a key press takes for ever.

And why does it now take 25 minutes to reboot instead of five minutes as
previously?

 

[DL]

What size is C drive & how much free space?
You've run Disk Cleanup?
Presumably you've run virus scans & malaware scans using several anti
malaware Apps
You don 'know' what services you turned off, and the results of disabling
them?

 

[Nitro]

i'm running XP home on a sony VAIO laptop. had it for about 3 years.
it's running slower and slower all the time. boot is slower. little
right-click context menu moves w the mouse can take forever. i click on
"desktop" icon in a file-save dialog and it literally takes 5 seconds for
dktop to appear in browser.

[snip]

Steve, my heart goes out to you.
In this bizarre world of computers, "upgrading", "downloading" and
blah-blah-blah, you'd think they'd make a computer smart enough and simple
enough that it would maintain itself, then we wouldn't have to spend endless
hours searching google and newsgroups for foolish reg hacks to "fix" what
should have never been broken.

my old win98 systems used to run smarter and faster than this incredibly
bloated self-sustaining pathology passed off as "progress" by Microsoft.
The Sony VAIO computer was advertised as a multi-media king when it first
came out, now it's a bloated peasant, dragging its ass in the dust. It's 2
gig processor and "centrino" technology may as well be put out to pasture.

to answer DL's post, I've got a 68 gig HD, of which 10 are free. I just ran
disk cleanup, which has freed about half a gig of space. I do have a RAM
issue, I've got 512 M on a sys that supports 2 gigs. I will indeed upgrade
this. but RAM or no RAM, the computer has still slowed down hugely in the
3 years I've had it.

The only other answer I can come up with is to wipe out the OS and do a
system restore with the VAIO system backup and update XP in one clean sweep,
before re-installing apps.

thanks for your comments

Nitro

 

[Daave]

i'm running XP home on a sony VAIO laptop. had it for about 3 years.
it's running slower and slower all the time. boot is slower. little
right-click context menu moves w the mouse can take forever. i click
on "desktop" icon in a file-save dialog and it literally takes 5
seconds for dktop to appear in browser.

minimize all windows and the desktop appears in slow bands. the
desktop icons blink on one-by-one almost (have about 30).

i dread updating windows (turn it off mostly) because at every update
my laptop runs slower. granted, i've installed more app's with more
TSR's, but i recently nuked a huge bunch of them, including all the
Sony Vaio crap. i switched off a bunch of useless services. I nuked
all the startup items I could in msconfig.

i recently changed my pagefile from 1.5x ram (static size) to "system
managed", thinking that windows great intelligence would prevail. not
so. still slow and goopy.

so... if anyone can help tell me "what up doc" with this goopy slow
computer, i would be grateful.

Regarding sluggishness in general, here are its usual causes:

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

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Viruses_Malware

2. Certain programs that are designed to combat malware (e.g., Norton
and McAfee). Ironically, they can slow things down because they simply
use way too many resources. Sometime they cause conflicts with other
programs. And their default mode is to scan your entire hard drive each
time you boot up. Fortunately, there are other antimalware programs
available that use far fewer resources (e.g., NOD32, Avast, and Avira).

3. Too many of *certain types* of programs always running in the
background -- with or without your knowledge.

Use these sites to determine what these programs are and to learn how to
configure them not to always run at startup:

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php#THE_PROGRAMS
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm

Sometimes it is recommended to use msconfig to configure the programs to
not run at startup. A better, more thorough program is Autoruns:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

But before you do this, you should use the preference settings of the
program in question. Otherwise, for some programs, they will return to
the startup list anyway!

4. Not enough RAM, which causes the PC to overly rely on the pagefile. A
quick way to determine if this is happening is to open Task Manager
(Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then note the three values
under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit,
and Peak.

The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value of
Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM.
Otherwise, you may want to explore this further by running Page File
Monitor for Windows XP:

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

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

http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/is-your-hard-disk-cddvd-drives-too-slow-while-copying/

and

http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/itserviceduck/udma_fix/

 

[Nitro]

i'm running XP home on a sony VAIO laptop. had it for about 3 years.
it's running slower and slower all the time. boot is slower. little
right-click context menu moves w the mouse can take forever. i click on
"desktop" icon in a file-save dialog and it literally takes 5 seconds for
dktop to appear in browser.

[snip...]

Regarding sluggishness in general, here are its usual causes:

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

Hi Daave, thanks for your points. I'll reply on each. I've always on AVG
and Kerio firewall. I'm pretty wise to mal-ware etc, so I keep a vigilant
eye on reg, startup, runonce, TRS's on task mgr etc.

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Viruses_Malware

2. Certain programs that are designed to combat malware (e.g., Norton
and McAfee). Ironically, they can slow things down because they simply
use way too many resources. Sometime they cause conflicts with other
programs. And their default mode is to scan your entire hard drive each
time you boot up. Fortunately, there are other antimalware programs
available that use far fewer resources (e.g., NOD32, Avast, and Avira).

you hit the nail on the head! Norton IS Malware!! It's one of the biggest
energy pigs on the security market. It also gets so deeply hooked into your
system, that it's a pain to uninstall when you want a divorce. I gladly
used Peter Norton's DOS utilities back in the prehistoric days, but Symantec
is basically in bed with M$ now, so they have no credibility with me.

3. Too many of *certain types* of programs always running in the
background -- with or without your knowledge.

Agreed. When I first bought the Sony VAIO (hey, I've been a Sony Fan and
have gladly used their appliances for 40 years!), I noted that the TSR list
on the Task Manager was about 3 pages long. So now I've nuke all Sony stuff
except the one the works the hotkeys.

Use these sites to determine what these programs are and to learn how to
configure them not to always run at startup:

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php#THE_PROGRAMS
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm

thanks. these are good resources. I think I nuked too many last time I did
surgery. I'll address this in a different thread.

Sometimes it is recommended to use msconfig to configure the programs to
not run at startup. A better, more thorough program is Autoruns:

good on both. MSCONFIG is very skinny now. If only that @#$% qttask would
stop coming back!

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

But before you do this, you should use the preference settings of the
program in question. Otherwise, for some programs, they will return to
the startup list anyway!

done. unfortunately, the slew of Sony services running have no pref's or
info on what is needed and what, not.

4. Not enough RAM, which causes the PC to overly rely on the pagefile. A
quick way to determine if this is happening is to open Task Manager
(Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then note the three values
under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit,
and Peak.

The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value of
Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM.
Otherwise, you may want to explore this further by running Page File
Monitor for Windows XP:

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

good one. I'm currently using 570 M, which is 58 M over my installed
physical RAM. Peak is 656 M.
More RAM needed, no doubt. Still, slow boots and slow context menu's -
even with no app's running; I don't think this is a RAM issue.

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

http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/is-your-hard-disk-cddvd-drives-too-slow-while-copying/
http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/itserviceduck/udma_fix/

naw. i would never muck with that. unless one of the Windows services I so
sloppily nuked, cause some kind of delay in mundane things like mouse and
shell menu's. (see my next thread. If I did something stupid, I'll
apologise to Peter Norton, but never to Bill Gates!

Nitro

 

[Caught]

i'm running XP home on a sony VAIO laptop. had it for about 3 years.
it's running slower and slower all the time. boot is slower. little
right-click context menu moves w the mouse can take forever. i click on
"desktop" icon in a file-save dialog and it literally takes 5 seconds for
dktop to appear in browser.

minimize all windows and the desktop appears in slow bands. the desktop
icons blink on one-by-one almost (have about 30).

i dread updating windows (turn it off mostly) because at every update my
laptop runs slower. granted, i've installed more app's with more TSR's,
but i recently nuked a huge bunch of them, including all the Sony Vaio
crap. i switched off a bunch of useless services. I nuked all the
startup items I could in msconfig.

i recently changed my pagefile from 1.5x ram (static size) to "system
managed", thinking that windows great intelligence would prevail. not so.
still slow and goopy.

so... if anyone can help tell me "what up doc" with this goopy slow
computer, i would be grateful.

thanks

Could try this - a newspaper site making suggestions

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10561483

 

[Steve Hayes]

Regarding sluggishness in general, here are its usual causes:

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

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Viruses_Malware

Well, yes. But if it is malware that is slowing my computer, none of the
various programs that are supposed to check for it have found it yet.

2. Certain programs that are designed to combat malware (e.g., Norton
and McAfee). Ironically, they can slow things down because they simply
use way too many resources. Sometime they cause conflicts with other
programs. And their default mode is to scan your entire hard drive each
time you boot up. Fortunately, there are other antimalware programs
available that use far fewer resources (e.g., NOD32, Avast, and Avira).

I think I'll try using one of these instead of AVG.

Another thing that may slow it up is upgrading to new versions of programs
that are more bloated and consume more resources, usually by adding bells and
whistles and little or no increased functionality.

3. Too many of *certain types* of programs always running in the
background -- with or without your knowledge.

Use these sites to determine what these programs are and to learn how to
configure them not to always run at startup:

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php#THE_PROGRAMS
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm

Sometimes it is recommended to use msconfig to configure the programs to
not run at startup. A better, more thorough program is Autoruns:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

But before you do this, you should use the preference settings of the
program in question. Otherwise, for some programs, they will return to
the startup list anyway!

Thanks, that sounds useful, and I'll have a look at them.

4. Not enough RAM, which causes the PC to overly rely on the pagefile. A
quick way to determine if this is happening is to open Task Manager
(Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then note the three values
under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit,
and Peak.

The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value of
Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM.
Otherwise, you may want to explore this further by running Page File
Monitor for Windows XP:

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

Yes, I think that links to the problem of "upgrading" to the "new and
improved" and memory-hogging versions of programs.

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

http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/is-your-hard-disk-cddvd-drives-too-slow-while-copying/

and

http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/itserviceduck/udma_fix/

Thanks again!

 

[DL]

Win needs 15% free space, minimum, to run efficiently, in your case a 10.2gb
minimum
Boot your PC into safe mode, see how it runs then, If it runs fine, then you
have a problem with some drivers/hw or apps running in the background, or
nasties

i'm running XP home on a sony VAIO laptop. had it for about 3 years.
it's running slower and slower all the time. boot is slower. little
right-click context menu moves w the mouse can take forever. i click on
"desktop" icon in a file-save dialog and it literally takes 5 seconds for
dktop to appear in browser.

[snip]

Steve, my heart goes out to you.
In this bizarre world of computers, "upgrading", "downloading" and
blah-blah-blah, you'd think they'd make a computer smart enough and simple
enough that it would maintain itself, then we wouldn't have to spend
endless hours searching google and newsgroups for foolish reg hacks to
"fix" what should have never been broken.

my old win98 systems used to run smarter and faster than this incredibly
bloated self-sustaining pathology passed off as "progress" by Microsoft.
The Sony VAIO computer was advertised as a multi-media king when it first
came out, now it's a bloated peasant, dragging its ass in the dust. It's
2 gig processor and "centrino" technology may as well be put out to
pasture.

to answer DL's post, I've got a 68 gig HD, of which 10 are free. I just
ran disk cleanup, which has freed about half a gig of space. I do have a
RAM issue, I've got 512 M on a sys that supports 2 gigs. I will indeed
upgrade this. but RAM or no RAM, the computer has still slowed down
hugely in the 3 years I've had it.

The only other answer I can come up with is to wipe out the OS and do a
system restore with the VAIO system backup and update XP in one clean
sweep, before re-installing apps.

thanks for your comments

Nitro

 

[Kaja]

Hi Nitro, my name is Kaja and I think I can help you. Over time computers
get slower due to a buildup in temporary files that are unnescary and other
factors. Just like a car computers need regular maintenance. Microsoft, in
their infinite wisdom built in maintenance tools. These are what I what I
would reccomend. Allow me to guide you through the process.
1. Start, all programs, accssesories, , system tools, disc cleanup.
select your disc C your hard disc. Give it a few minutes as it anaylyzes
and then a box will pop up. Look at all the selections and there will be
numbers next to them at the right. This is the amount of space you can free
up (the total amount you can free up will be calculated for you) then go
through and check all boxes with a number next to it. Go ahead and hit OK
and do this. That is the fist step. Do this weekly.

2. Start, accessories, all programs, accessories, sytem tools, disc
defragmenter. Over time files get fragmented and out of place. This cleans
that up. Although the initial run can take up to three hours. It Is worth
it. There will be two options Analyze and defragment. Hit Defragment. Do
this not so often every couple of months or so

3. Clean out the cache in Internet Explorer and all unnescary files. Open
up Internet Explorer and at the top on the menu go to Tools, Internet
Options. you Will see options to delete. Delete the temporary internet
files, cookies and hit clear history. This should be done weekly.

One last thing as a special trick for you. Go to start, run and type
'"prefetch" and hit OK. A folder will open up with a lot of files. These
are unnesscary files that accumulate and can be deleted. so go to at the top
left. Edit, select all. It will turn blue. Hit delete to confirm sending
the files to the recycle bin. Then empty the recycle bin.

As for your desktop, since you have so many icons you may want to go through
and see if you don't need some and delete them. That may help as well.

Well thats all. I hope that helps. Let me know please so I can improve my
services.

Best regards,
Kaja

 

[Nitro]

Thanks Kaja, much appreciated. The prefetch and disk defrag are a good
idea. Prefetch only had 3 meg of files in it. Disk defrag always helps a
little bit.

my main problem for the slow and goopy laptop was that I had disabled too
many services, some which were apparently essential for proper win
execution. fixed that helped about 60% of the the problem.

the rest I think I can solve with more RAM. my sony vaio only came with 512
meg of ram. these days 2 gigs is preferrable. so i will upgrade and adjust
my swap file accordingly.

thanks for your recommendations...

Nitro

 

[vsv72]

'm running XP home on a sony VAIO laptop. had it for about 3 years.
it's
running slower and slower all the time. boot is slower. little
right-click
context menu moves w the mouse can take forever. i click on "desktop"
icon
in a file-save dialog and it literally takes 5 seconds for dktop to
appear
in browser.
Thanks
V