S L O W laptop - Help!

Toshiba Satellite M45-S2692 running WinXP Home SP2. This laptop is running so slow it's almost going backwards! I ran a defrag which seemed to help a little bit, and I did one malware scan (which found over 250 items) but the malware software seemed to cause more problems so I removed it; the PC also locked up in mid-scan. The main problem is that the PC takes FOREVER to load to the desktop completely. It boots OK, goes to the login screen where you'd enter the password, the desktop comes up pretty quick, but from there it takes forever for all the icons and shortcuts to load completely. During this 'load up' time, I can't click on anything and if I move the mouse to the Start button, I get the hourglass. It takes about 7 minutes for all the desktop items to finish loading. I turned off some stuff in msconfig but that actually seemed to slow things down even more!!!! WHAT'S THE DEAL HERE?!?!? Any help, ideas, or suggestion will be GREATLY appreciated! Thanx!

hopperdave2000

 

Please follow the steps below:

- Run ALL the steps in this Sticky thread READ & RUN ME FIRST Before Asking for Support

• Make sure you check version numbers and get all updates.

After doing ALL of the above you still have a problem make sure you have booted to normal mode and run the steps in the below link to properly use HijackThis:

Downloading, Installing, and Running HijackThis

Make sure you also rename HijackThis.exe as suggested in the procedures. Use analyse.exe for the new name. This is very important due to some new infections going around.

When you return to make your next post, make sure you attach the following logs and that you have run these scans in the following order too:

• CounterSpy
• AVG Antispyware Log - ONLY IF NEEDED you were not able to run CounterSpy
• Bitdefender - from step 6
• Panda Scan - from step 6
• runkeys.txt - the log from GetRunKey.bat
• newfiles.txt - the log from ShowNew.bat
• HijackThis

 

Just wanted to post and report that everything seems to be OK. Ran CCleaner which removed just under 1gb of garbage. AVG Antispy removed a ton of junk too. I rebooted and things were still pretty freekin' slow.... I ran the McAfee removal tool, rebooted, and now this laptop is zipping along like NASCAR! Ya know- I really hate McAfee 'cuz they load so much :crap that it makes a PC act like it's infected alot worse than it is.... Thanx for Malware guide anyway! I'm sure I'll need it in the future!

hopperdave2000

 

I decided to go ahead and go thru the PC completely using the malware guide... there was ALOT of evil crap-ola in there (including McAfee ). It's now truly clean and running like a champ!! Thanx again MG!

 

If you would post the logs from the tutorial, I can double check them to make sure there isn't something lurking on the system that needs to be dealt with.