*Extreme* slowdown in Windows suddenly...

Hey all. I've had phenomenal experiences in the past with Major Geeks' help, so I figured I'd try again with a new problem I've been having...

This doesn't appear to be malware related - I've done scans with Malwarebytes, SAS currently, have run CCleaner, etc., and have turned up nothing. Twice in the past when I've had malware infections, the symptoms were very telltale, and these programs either picked them up or refused to load at all, as is the MO for a malware infection. Both my infections also came at very specific points when I visited file sharing websites, whereas now, I don't as a rule go to these anymore. In other words, there was no distinct catalyst that would have welcomed an infection like was the case the past two times.

So anyway, on to the problem. Several days ago, my machine (XP) started slowing down in very regular spurts. I noticed it first with Firefox. I would get "script failed to load" errors on my basic email websites (yahoo, etc.) Then I noticed that when entering text, about every 30 seconds, the machine would just hang for about 5 seconds. But nothing at all in any browser (FF, IE, Chrome) acted weirdly or out of the norm, as I would expect from malware. Simply slowdown at regular intervals.

I then started noticing it in the OS in general - opening windows, moving them, etc., all would come to a standstill every 30 seconds or so.

I tried:

- Cleaning everything CCleaner recommended
- Cleaning the registry with CCleaner
- Using Windows' disk cleanup for temp files
- Chkdsk - this found some errors and fixed them, but it didn't alleviate the problem
- Defragging - basically ground to a halt at around 40%, had to stop
- Malwarebytes - turned up nothing
- SAS - running now, but I suspect will come up with nothing
- Checked running processes and startup processes - nothing out of the norm and no heavy load on machine. When the machine stalls, System Idle jumps to 99% and everything else falls to zero, until it recovers (usually about 5 seconds).

I noticed that even bootup is taking much longer than usual.

So, any suggestions?

Thanks a lot all!!!!

 

Those symptoms are consistent with the computer having insufficient RAM and having to use virtual memory - the paging file.

What RAM do you have, and what does the Performance tab of Task Manager tell you about your physical memory? If that confirms a memory congestion problem you will have to take a look at your startup programs and running processes - or add more RAM.

 

Will take a look very soon. I just did think of something else- nothing changed on my system whatsoever, so RAM running low would be odd, BUT, I think I can trace this all back to an incident that happened just recently- I had left my notebook on for a very long time without power. The battery got so drained that it took a good 15 minutes of being plugged in to even get the power button to work again (this is a MacBook Pro). I had never drained it like that. Or, perhaps more accurately, the system itself never got that drained before - I believe it would always go into a shut down mode to protect itself well before getting so wiped.

After 15 minutes I could turn it on once more, but I'm beginning to suspect it was after that that I started experiencing massive slowdowns - almost as though it's permanently stuck in some kind of mode (?)

And lastly, I'm now using it in OSX - no problems whatsoever, so we can tentatively rule out hardware issues.

Thanks.