Painfully Slow Laptop

Discussion in 'Malware Help (A Specialist Will Reply)' started by langel, Nov 5, 2008.

  1. langel

    langel Private E-2

    Good Evening!

    I am working on a friend's laptop that starting running painfully slow about two weeks ago. According to him, nothing had been recently downloaded, nor had any changes been made.

    I have run all of the programs suggested and have attached the logs. No malware/viruses were found in the scans. Any help would bee greatly appreciated.

    Laurie
     

    Attached Files:

  2. langel

    langel Private E-2

    Last logfile
     

    Attached Files:

  3. chaslang

    chaslang MajorGeeks Admin - Master Malware Expert Staff Member

    I'm sorry but based on the logs which show this laptops specs, this PC was always slow and will always be slow. The processor speed ( 647 Mhz) is too slow for Windows XP and 256 MB of RAM is about one-quarter of the amount of RAM I would recommend even on a much faster PC. In addition, only 52.45 MB of RAM is available for programs to use. Also the hard disk has about 3.34 GB of available space. While this seems like a lot, it is not that much considering that due to the small amount of RAM the operating system will also be using about 2 GB of hard disk space for virtual memory and the Windows pagefile will use quite a lot too. This PC is just too limited in specs to properly run Windows XP.

    I also see that you or your friend, just installed AVG8 on 11/04/2008. This will slow it down even more since it is somewhat resource hungry unless many parts of it are disabled. However, the low amount of RAM is still going to be a problem.

    You could disable a load of those unnecessary startup processes an uninstall AVG8 which will help but then you will also have no protection.

    You also have left over junk from Symantec wasting resources. Please run the below then reboot. After reboot run it one more time.

    Norton Removal Tool (SymNRT)


    Either way these are not malware issues.
     
  4. langel

    langel Private E-2

    Thank you for your reply. I suspected this may be the problem, but ran it through the "works" just to be sure. I appreciate your input.

    Laurie
     
  5. bjgarrick

    bjgarrick MajorGeeks Admin - Malware Expert

    If you are not having any malware problems, it is time to do our final steps:
    1. We recommed you keep SUPERAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for scanning/removal of malware. Unless you purchase them, they provide no protection. They do not use any significan amount of resources ( except a little disk space ) until you run a scan.
    2. If we used Pocket Killbox during your cleanup, do the below
      • Run Pocket Killbox and select File, Cleanup, Delete All Backups
    3. If we had you use ComboFix, uninstall ComboFix (This uninstall will only work as written if you installed ComboFix on your Desktop like we requested.)
      • Click START then RUN and enter the below into the run box and then click OK. Note the quotes are required
      • "%userprofile%\Desktop\combofix" /u
        • Notes: The space between the combofix" and the /u, it must be there.
        • This will uninstall ComboFix and also reset hidden files and folders settings back to Windows defaults.
      • Delete the C:\combofix folder from combofix (if it exists)
    4. Any other miscellaneous tools we may have had you install or download can be uninstalled and deleted.
    5. If we had you download any registry patches like fixme.reg or fixWLK.reg (or any others), you can delete these files now.
    6. If running Vista, it is time to make sure you have reenabled UAC by double clicking on the C:\MGtools\enableUAC.reg file and allowing it to be added to the registry.
    7. Go to add/remove programs and uninstall HijackThis.
    8. You can delete the C:\MGtools folder and the C:\MGtools.exe file. You can also delete the C:\MGlogs.zip
    9. If you are running Vista, Windows XP or Windows ME, do the below:
      • Refer to the cleaning steps in the READ ME for your Window version and see the steps to Disable System Restore which will flush your Restore Points.
      • Then reboot and Enable System Restore to create a new clean Restore Point.
    10. After doing the above, you should work thru the below link:
     

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