PC is extremely slow when a flash video/animation is running

Hi

I've been sent here from the Malware section where my problem couldn't be resolved as it seems my PC is clean from malwares.

Here is what I posted on the other section;

A quick word on my problem; Flash videos and animations are slowing my computer down a lot, and this applies on every browser. At first I tried reinstalling Firefox, then flash. I then removed all my add-ons for Firefox but I noticed that it was slow on IE and Chrome too. So I gave up on that track.

Firefox demands a lot of memory no matter how many times I'll reinstall it (with a flash video playing, it goes between 95 and 100% of memory usage)

Chrome doesn't use as much memory, but Flash is running slow nevertheless.

I ran all the programs (logs attached) but it didn't change much. I think it's going a little better, but I can't say for sure because my computer is getting slower as time goes on;

When I boot the PC, it will run Flash animations/videos properly for an hour or two. At the end of the day though, it will be very sluggish.

Thanks for the help,

Shg

 

Hi Shoogoo, and welcome to MG :wave What version of JAVA do you have installed, and what is your OS? (XP, Vista, Windows 7?) no, no logs are there. Also, are you on a dial-up connection or hi-speed?

You might need to update your JAVA. The current version is Java6_Update20. That would be where I would start to look first, sometimes just updating will help a lot.

 

Thank you

First of all, sorry for saying that logs were attached, I copy/pasted my previous message from the malware section and totally forgot to remove that part. My bad.

My JAVA was not up to date and I corrected that. However I'm still having huge slowdowns.

I don't really know my connection speed so I ran a test



As for the O.S. This is getting complicated. As you may have noticed, I'm not a 'PC Maestro' and thus I tend to suffer from any complication for months rather than trying to solve it (now that I know this site, however, I think I might improve on that field :-D). I have kept a dual boot for months now. One being a legit XP where all my programs were installed, and the OS I always boot on. Aside from that, I have a Windows 7 installation that a friend installed (I think he got a copy legit for himself, does that allow him to install it to another machine? If not then I got a pirate version of Windows 7 I suppose) on my machine to show me how nice it is.

Well I didn't like Windows 7 mainly because my machine is 5 years old and I thought it was slow, plus all my programs were on XP and it was running just fine. Until I ran the ComboFix thing that installed the Windows XP Recovery Console. Since then, I can't choose to boot on XP during the boot of my PC. So I'm kind of happy I didn't desinstall Windows 7 (I don't know how to anyway) because I wouldn't have anything left to boot on!

I thought that it'd be wise to try and repair my XP, so I put the CD in the driver, but all I got is a black screen (both by hitting any key at startup & changing the boot sequence by asking to boot the CD first). I looked it up on Google and I read it might be because I have a dual boot and the CD doesn't know what to do. When I put the XP CD on Windows 7, the option to install/repair is greyed out :confused

Now what's weird is that I have the same slowdowns on both XP and Windows 7, something I never tested for some reason (I was avoiding Windows 7, but I have no other choice now)

That's a long post, sorry.

tl;dr - I ran the tests on XP - XP doesn't work anymore - I'm on a Windows 7 installation (maybe not legit) - Flash problem is the same on both OS, on every browsers.

 

OK, you are confusing me here now. You have XP and Windows 7? :confused I think it best to only have one OS. Either XP or Windows 7 on one computer. That may be why you cannot repair XP. when you inserted the CD, what key did you press?

I don't think you can run Windows 7 and XP at the same time. Plus, there may be a lot of conflicts between Windows 7 and XP.

I am asuming you are on hi-speed, and I am not familiar with that, sorry. But as for the OS, I am sure it should be one or the other, not both. :confused Not to worry, someone with more knowlege on this will post, and we will get it figured out..

More question s for you:
1- what is the Service Pack of your system? It should say, Windows XP SP 2 or Sp3 or SP3.5? You can open IE and click Help> About Internet Explorer> System Info. You can also find this info by: Start> Help & Support > Computer Information. What does it show?

2-What was the last "Windows updates" you got?

3- When was the last time you visited Windows Update site for any updates?

Thank you for your time, and I will be looking forward to your answers.

 

Take a look at this sticky;

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=142511

Maybe that'll help.

 

Just taking a stab, but have you checked to see if your video card drivers are up to date? Maybe they are corrupted?

 

Hi, I can't answer any of your 3 last questions as I can't start WinXP anymore.

I am not running XP and 7 at the same time, it's either one or the other. I used to run XP all the time, but it doesn't work since I ran the ComboFix which installed the recovery console. So I'm running Windows 7.

And I think you're right, it's because I have two windows that I can't repair it. I read it somewhere that it could cause problems.

God I wish my friend didn't try to convince me on Win7

Thank you, but I think I need to access WinXP to actually be able to perform those operations. If I got it right, there is no Boot.ini on Win7?

Good point. I installed the last ones right now but it didn't change anything

I have a question though. Win XP is on my C:/ and Win 7 is on another partition. If I format C:/ (and get rid of that Win XP install) will it wreck my Win 7 installation?

Thanks for your time

 

bcdedit is now the "boot.ini" of windows 7, more info here:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2676-bcdedit-how-use.html

 

I'm assuming that win7 and xp are on the same drive. With 2 separate partitions?

Also, I'm trying to clear a few things up. XP is hosed, yes? Win 7 you want to keep yes?

If you want win7, then we need to do a few things.

Click Start, type in cmd, right click on cmd, select run as administrator (yes)
type:

bcdedit /export c:\bcdbackup (press enter)

next type in :

bcdedit > bcd.txt
notepad bcd.txt (post this info here as an attachment)

Someone here should be able to continue this, if I can't reply.

 

Have you looked at your startup programs on boot up to free up system resources?

While you could make an autobac file to run when you need to switch off some resources such as gaming, I don't recommend this practice, unless you know how to do this and easily reverse the process

If you can run Hijackthis (Trend Micro) and send the log, we can see what is running on your PC and what is not needed