Computer running slow - not malware

moro

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 8, 2005
Messages
85
I had a friend bring me a PC they were having problems with. They said it was really slow. I looked at it and gave it the typical prognoses. It is a P4 1.8gz machine. It has never been reloaded and had the typical malware infestation (nothing really dangerous). I formatted the drive and reinstalled XP. Loaded up all the drivers and installed MS Office, AVG free, and Firefox. Its still really slow. Now this is no powerhouse, and only has 256MB of memory (Rambus, gack). Still this thing takes like 3-5 seconds to even register selecting an icon. Typing text often has a delay of 5 seconds or so. It shouldn't be THAT slow.

I checked cpu and memory usage and its not stressed at idle. CPU sits at 0% and has about half memory free (that's pretty good with only 256 total). From idle I launched IE. It took 45 seconds. CPU never went over 54% (mostly around 20-30%) and memory never went below 25% free. So its not taping out the CPU and memory.

I ran some stability tests and had no problems. Ran memory tests they all passed. Its solid as a rock and about as fast. I put AVG free, Office 2007, and Firefox on it. Nothing else. It's a clean patched install of XP home. No errors in the device manager. CPU-ID indicates the CPU and memory are running at rated speeds.

Any ideas?
 
The ram % didnt go below 25 because of page filing. Make sure nothing is starting up with windows (i know ms office adds itself). check the startup folder and start>run>msconfig. also you can rightclick on my computer > properties > advanced tab > performance settings section > settings > advanced >change and increase your page file.

after that click ok then go back to the visual effects tab and check the best performance radio button. Then click ok. That should help.
 
yeah I checked msconfig and used a few other apps to see if I was missing anything. Its really bare bones. I have visual performance set to max, no bells and whistles. I had forgotten about changing the page file size. I set it to a reasonable fixed amount and that helped some.

Word is down to 28 seconds for an initial load. Reopening word is just 4 or 5 seconds.
 
Run some diagnostics to make sure the motherboard, CPU, and RAM are running at their rated stock speeds.
 
Test the hard drive for errors using Seatools bootable CD. If it passes, take off AVG. The newest AVG Free really hurts performance on old systems. I can't even install it on some laptops I have because you might as well take a nap after clicking an icon.
 
AVG is no longer a good product. Many people are having issues with it. Remove it and see how the PC performs. There are several other free options with MSE being at the top of the list. If not MSE then Avira or Avast.
 
AVG is a POS. Test the HDD with manufacturer diagnostics. I recommend getting a copy of Hiren's and running it off of there. Also check the Event Viewer under System for "disk" or "ntfs" errors. Quite often when a HDD starts to fail, Windows will slow down to prevent further major errors from occurring. It's not uncommon to see this. Clean up your MSCONFIG as well. Also, 256 MB of RAM is not enough for XP these days. 512 is barely cutting. The bare minimum I'd say is 768, but since it's RAMBUS, you're pretty much SOL without spending quite a bit of money.
 
  • First, AVG is a bloated piece of shit. Remove it immediately. You will notice a big difference. If you want a fast/lean AV on there, go MSE.
  • Also, going close to or over 50% hard drive capacity and you're really going to notice slow downs. I have a few machines at work that are great (20GB drives), but as soon as I get them close to 10GB disk space they really start taking a long time to boot and load apps.
  • Make sure you defrag it.
  • Use a tool like Revouninstaller and check the autorun tool, and delete any entries that are not necessary (leave AV products etc.)
  • Finally, and very important, download the 'disk tools' for whatever brand hard drive that is. I've found that failing drives often have very poor performance. You can tell somethings wrong and the tool will tell you with an advanced scan.
 
I'm going with /usr's idea about the amount of RAM. XP SP2/3 gobbles up more RAM (512MB is recommended) than XP gold (128MB-256MB). Plus, you've mentioned Office 2007 and some other modern programs which are obviously RAM hungry. With the cash you would spend upgrading the RAM to 512MB you might as well get a new PC (does anyone sell RAMBUS anymore?).
 
Have you tried deleting some old files and logs, maybe run ccleaner?

Generally I hate to install extra TSR's on Windows, but there is a little app called Process Tamer that can make a single core system a lot more bearable to use. All it really does is jockey process priorities when it sees something start hogging the CPU.
 
#1 - You need at LEAST 512MB ram nowadays to run XP properly.
#2 - Get rid of AVG and see what happens
#3 - Your HDD may be the issue as well... try a new HDD(preferable something 7200RPM)
#4 - Profit??
 
Thanks everyone. I'll try the suggestions. I'll take off AVG and see if that helps. Its always a race to keep up with so many different software areas to know whats good now or not. I've mostly suggested Kaspersky and ESET for some years. You can't get some people to pay for AV though. To bad those are typically the ones who really need it.

I was kind of suspecting the hard drive also. I'll run some diagnostics on it.

I ran CPU-z and the speeds reported were good. I ran the advanced tools from hijackthis to check for start up files and running processes. Its clean other then the programs I installed.
 
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