Computer performance slows down

I have a HP, P3, 37.2 GB computer and I don't know how it happened, but when I start my computer up, it work alright. But it takes longer than it should to refresh my desktop and open folders. Then like a hour later, after I leave the computer running, the performance gets really bad, such as the audio in video starts to get really stratchy and hesistant, like in slow motion, my mouse doesn't move as fast as it used to and it takes really long for things to respond, can someone please help before I clear my whole hard drive.

 

I assume that "37.2GB" refers to the capacity of your hard drive. How full is it?

What clock speed does your P3 CPU run at?

It also would be a good idea to let us know what operating system you're running, and what programs you usually have running when the problem appears. If we have that information, you're less likely to get bad or useless guesses for a response.

Also -- did this problem appear shortly after you installed new hardware or another program? If so, what hardware or program?

 

Not allot of info but i stongly recommend getting a spyware killer(ad-aware).
And also, when is the last time you defregmented your HDD?

 

Re: Computer performance slows down - "Reprise"

I want to reserect this tread because I have the very same problem with a computer I've been maintaining. I picked a used computer for my mother to use as an internet machine. Starts off fine then quickly turns into a "beached whale." I've alway felt as if it may have some sort of trojan or virus but neither Norton or McAfee can find anything with the latest def's.. Nor does Spybot find the problem. I've tried many things along these lines but nothing is helping.

I once got a wild hair and tried adding a slot cooling fan and for a short time, that did make it act more normal but this was short lived and now it's bonked again. I have run memory tests, hard disk tests (its only about 25% capacity) and some others which I can't recall right now. Nothing shows up as bad or conflicting. For no more she does with it and whats installed on it, this machine should run like a champ, (she isn't exactly a power user) but it has me befuddled.

(HP Vectra, P3-933 Mhz, 192 Mb ram, 40 Gb HD., W98SE, Norton AV or McAfee AV, SpyBot, DSL-(SBC/Yahoo)

Thanx

 

Re: Computer performance slows down - "Reprise"

Defrag, and be sure you've got a secondary firewall. Zone Alarm, or McAfee's. Run process explorer and see if there's anything running that shouldn't be.

 

Re: Computer performance slows down - "Reprise"

Try this memory manager http://www.majorgeeks.com/download1670.html I used it when I had 98 because it doesn't seem to manage memory that well.

 

Sorry, I failed to mention I was running Zone Alarm on this machine. I also run Memturbo 2.2.

You are correct though, that something keeps tapping the cpu. I watch the graph on Memturbo and some hidden proccess is keeping the CPU usage at near 100% constantly even when everything should be idle. I cannot determine what it is. I have turned off every extraneous program and TSR one by one with little or no change. It is happening in the background and I can't locate it.

Does AdAware do something different than SpyBot? I haven't tried it yet because I had assumed they were both about the same idea finding and blocking cookies.

Thanx again

 

Adaware actively hunts down spyware programs.

 

For the virus scans, try Avast - free here: http://majorgeeks.com/download1968.html

I used to use Norton Pro, but since I installed Avast and it removed 20! Viruses that Norton had been asleep at the wheel on, I'm never going back.