Very slow computer, but fine in safe mode

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transcend11

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I have a Compaq Presario laptop that is a couple years old. I haven't had any issues with it until recently in the past couple months, it suddenly slowed down.

Windows bootup takes a while (about 5 minutes), programs load slow, multitasking is slow, sound and video skips. But sometimes when it just sits for a while it will be up to speed, such as browsing the internet... for a small spurt of a few minutes. One thing I did notice is that whenever this slowdown is occurring, the hard drive light is active. The CPU usage is usually at 100% during these moments as well.

Sometimes I even see hard drive activity when there should be a completely idle moment, such as when it sits at the desktop for 10 minutes.

I have Norton antivirus, I have scanned with both Spybot and Adaware for spyware. Honestly this computer is just used for school so there's no reason for anything bad to be on it.

The kicker is, in safe mode the computer works completely normal. This makes it seem as if this is not a hardware issue with the hard drive or processor, but a software issue. Would a repair install of Windows XP help? I was going to do it, but then I read you should back up all data because it may be lost... really?

Please let me know what I can try out to fix this problem!! Thank you for any advice.
 
Its possible that the drive has dropped back into PIO mode instead of DMA.

In windows xp, goto device manager and click on the IDE/ATA controller (not the disk drives) and click properties. Then click the "Advanced Settings" tab and it should bring up the drive and what access mode its using. Typically they should be using Ultra DMA 4/5/6, if there using PIO, then thats the reason.

If it is PIO mode, then microsofts fix from there website at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472

is

1. Double-click Administrative Tools, and then click Computer Management.
2. Click System Tools, and then click Device Manager.
3. Expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers node.
4. Double-click the controller for which you want to restore the typical DMA transfer mode.
5. Click the Driver tab.
6. Click Uninstall.
7. When the process completes, restart your computer. When Windows restarts, the hard disk controller is re-enumerated and the transfer mode is reset to the default value for each device that is connected to the controller.


If its in DMA mode, then the only thing i can think of is a dying HD. You can check the system/Event logs and see if your getting any dmio errors
 
A repair install wouldn't remove any of your data, but at the same time, it might not fix the problem either. You should always have your data backed up anyway, before doing any type of major operation like that.

Chances are, it's either a driver or software app that is causing it...since it doesn't happen in Safe Mode. If you can't figure it out by Task Manager, a full format might be the answer....especially if it hasn't been done in a few years.
 
Thank you lots, very good advice.

When backing up, what software do you use to burn data to CD's? Is there nothing built into XP, or will I have to install something like Nero on the laptop?
 
There is built-in software, but I don't like using it. Nero would work, or one of the free alternatives, like DeepBurner, ImgBurn, etc. Majorgeeks.com will have a listing of them.
 
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