EXTREMELY slow running system

My daughter's laptop is driving me crazy.

Here are the specs:

Microsoft Windows XP
Home Edition
Version 2002
Service Pack 2

Dell Inspiron 1150
Celeron CPU 2.40 Ghz
768 MB of RAM

20 GB hard drive
8 GB free

Norton Anti Virus 2004

Here is what I've done thus far.

I've removed some software (Kodak Easy Share, some toolbars that she had no clue how they got on the system, etc.). I've also installed and run Adaware and Spybot S&D. Niether of those found spyware. Anti virus definitions are current and virus scans find no problems.

I've also run an online scan with Trend Housecall. No problems were detected (no worms, trojans, etc.)

I made sure that all Windows updates were done. I've rerun Adaware and Spybot, with no problems detected.

I've done a disk cleanup and defrag.

All virus defintions are current and virus scan reveals nothing.

I've done a Hijackthis log but I'm not sure what is safe to fix on it.

The CPU is showing that it is operating at 100% capacity and I can't figure out why. I can't find anything running that would be causing it to operate at 100% capacity like that.

I can't seem to figure out what, if any, other programs may be running in the background or automatically starting when Windows starts that could be causing this extreme sluggish performance.

What other suggestions do you have?

 

Press ctrl+alt+delete and click the processes tab. It will show you what percentage each application is using of CPU and ram.

 

Have you tried running Panda Active Scanner?
http://www.pandasoftware.com/products/activescan.htm

 

I recently fixed a similar problem with a friends laptop. There is a great thread on this site, which you may have seen. http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407
It's a list of steps to go through to rid yourself of malware. It looks long and the list of programs to download may seem like overkill. But I had already run about the first four or five scans without finding a single thing. Then the next program's scan found over 300 problems!Most of these were data miners and didn't show up in the processes. Anyway I let it fix all the problems and tada.....the cpu usage dropped from 99% to 6% immediately.
This wasn't the first time I fixed someone's computer simply by following the list. It's a little time consuming, but it beats going crazy!

good luck

 

Could be there's an interupt constantly ...uh.. interupting the CPU. Might try Process Explorer to find out(or at least confirm) what is taking up the CPU process.

 

Dumb response removed

 

Its a laptop Splitt3r. Laptops come with smaller drives, especially older ones. Great advice otherwise, of course its been mentioned in this thread already...

 

If it's OK when you boot in safe mode then I would definately look in Task Manager to see what your CPU usage is and work out what is hogging all of the power.

A while ago I had a program that came with my new monitor, it was supposed to optimise thte monitor, what it did was constantly use 60% + of my CPU... I wasn't impressed.

There are a couple of other possibilities that are worth thinking about, Malware, as has been suggested but also if the laptop cooling vent is blocked or the fan has failed then your CPU could be throttling right back to protect itself. Hope you can narrow it down soon.

Alex

 

I instructed a freind to follow the malware cleaning link from this site (he hasn't had the time yet) but I especially told him to download CCleaner from this website:

http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4191

It found 5Gig (YES 5Gig) of crud on his system, even though he has antivirus and a firewall he still had a significant build up of JUNK files (e.g. .temp, .bak, etc). He cleaned out 1Gig and now pats me on the back for how fast his comp is running and web surfing has become enjoyable again.

 

Worthwhile replies only, please.

 

Excellent summarisation chaslang, I was just trying to indicate that my friend takes basic security precautions (w.out can certainly lead to problematic programs/applications interfering/entering the sys and causing signifcant slowing, instability and or corruption) but even with this aspect addressed there is the potential for the sys to become cluttered with crud from normal safe usage, and significantly impair the systems functionality. Your explanation was a lot better than my intial attempt and clarified it a lot more concisely.