I'm not quite sure what is wrong..

This past week I have noticed that my computer is running a bit sluggish.

I ran CCleaner and Iobit Smartdefrag overnight. Just now when I ran CCleaner, it took approximately 8 to 10 minutes just to finish analyzing which files would be deleted. It took about the same amount of time to delete those files. CCleaner is configured to use normal file deletion so that is not the issue.

I also decided to run SmartDefrag and choose the Analyze function -- I noticed anazlying was going extremely slow in SmartDefrag as well. It was only analyzing about 1000 files every few seconds where as back in January it would find upwards of 50,000 files in a matter of 10 seconds. It took about 20 minutes just to finish analyzing.

I am 99% for sure I do not have any virus or malware and there are no background applications hogging any resources. My CPU usage was at a steady 0% when I first opened CCleaner and/or SmartDefrag.

So my question is, how do I diagnose and fix this problem? I think it might have been a previous windows update but I'm not sure which

 

I would first try a restore to a date more than a week ago, you could probably go 3 weeks.

Then, if this helps, be sure to download the M$ updates. If this doesn't work, attach a picture of your task manager processes, sorted from most to least memory usage.

 

All the restores I try before like a week ago have failed :confused

 

Try booting into safe mode, press F8 repeatedly when booting up, select safe mode. Does this make the computer run faster? If yes, then some application is causing the performance and you will need to find out which one. To do so, run msconfig to deselect items from the startup tab, rebooting each time under selective startup. Eliminate a couple at a time to save time. Time how many seconds it takes to go from shutdown to completed boot up. This will give something of a benchmark with different settings. I always strive to achieve complete boot in under 1 minute, although, especially on the older XP OS machines, this isn't always possible because a lot of these have only 256M in ram, which is barely enough with the SP3 pack.

The fact that restoring to a state previous to your problems may indicate a greater likelyhood of a hardware problem. You may also want to perform RAM and hard drive tests that you can find in MG freeware.

By the way, I have installed and run ccleaner on computers years old, and it has never taken more than 4 or 5 minutes to run the cleaner, 10 minutes is definitely too long.

What are your computer specs? OS, ram, hard drive size and free space. If your HD is filled up this can cause sluggishness, although if you were able to defrag this probably isn't the case.

Task manager picture?

From your previous posts last year on MG, I am assuming you understand every thing I have mentioned. If you don't, just say so and I'll provide more step by step detail.

 

Boot time is not a problem, it takes around 30 seconds to show the login screen then another 10 or so for everything to load.

Can you recommend some good software to test my RAM and/or hard drive?

Yes I realized it was taking far too long and was unable to find any solution myself. For some reason I thought enabling the indexing service would help but it didn't do much of anything..


I am using XP SP2, I installed SP3 a few days ago however either SP3 or one of the updates that come along with it slowed down my pc tremendously so I did a system restore. The slow speeds were an issue before installing SP3, so this was not the cause of my problems.

Currently there is only one hard drive in my computer, 160G with over 100G available. I have 1.5g of ram.

Here is a picture of my task manager, all processes visible and sorted by mem usage (http://i42.tinypic.com/10fzxqc.png)


I do understand everything you've said, normally I am able to solve problems myself however some (such as this) leave me stumped confused

Edit; I two other computers, one with a similar setup but only 1g of ram and Ccleaner/Smartdefrag runs much faster on that pc

 

Have you tried safe mode boot?

Clearly, your 'puter has plenty of resourses. Have you run chkdsk /f?
http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/chkdsk.htm


Memtest 3.8 and memory diagnostis, a M$ program, can be found and downloaded from here.

Your TM pic shows steam.exe and 6 occasions of chrome.exe running. Steam is for gaming and chrome is for google. Try uninstalling both, you can get them back later. What are you using for antivirus?

In your TM. select the view-select columns and check the memory commit size and descriptions columns and post that. Also, run services.msc and disable the indexing services, see blackviper.com for more information.

 

Yes I already tried safe mode. Booting into safe mode with and without networking enabled did not return different results.

I will not uninstall Steam as I would lose all of my game files. I don't have the bandwidth or time to re-download my games. & chrome creates a new process for each tab I have open, and as can be seen in my pic I have multiple tabs open. I have used chrome since I re-installed windows a few months ago.

As for antivirus, I have both Comodo Firewall and Comodo Antivirus installed and running.

I could not find the options you said to enable, perhaps you could be more specific?
http://i42.tinypic.com/2iho7xe.png

 

Apparently your TM doesn't offer the same options as Vista does. Have you tried the RAM tests and chkdsk? I f the safe mode boot didn't help, it sounds like either hardware or malware. There is another program from M$, sysinternals, that gives you a very comprehensive picture of what is running and who it came from.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/0e18b180-9b7a-4c49-8120-c47c5a693683.aspx


Before calling it hardware related, I'd go through the malware removal process on the sticky post in this malware section. It is very thorough and will take some time but we've pretty much eliminated the easy answers.

 

Good morning Netsurfer, Can you do another tm check this time select the option to check services from all users, its at the bottom of the tm screen just to make sure nothing else is running under that tab.

 

I took two more screenshots of my TM.

without services from all users
http://i41.tinypic.com/2emeovp.png

with services form all users
http://i42.tinypic.com/2whpmx0.png

I do not have time to run the entire guide currently. I am nearly 100% sure I do not have any malware and/or viruses but I will try to run the guide tomorrow,

 

Hi I have not yet run the guide but I am in safe mode currently and CCleaner is running as it should at normal speed, smart defrag does not do anything anymore (stays at 0% analyzing). There have been no major changes to my computer.

Before I continue, is this info of any importance?

 

What are the google applications you have installed?
The Ati drivers , do you have the whole application installed or just the drivers?

 

Also the process openVPnas.exe it reported as spyware, so this wont help