Still Sluggish

Over the past couple weeks our system, Dell 333 + Win98SE + IE6, kept getting more sluggish. The normal SpyBot, AdAware sweep was no longer finding any problems to fix and McAfee hasnt found a problem for many, many months. A couple days ago I online scanned with Registry Mechanic - our first resistry scan ever. RM found 700+ things that needed fixed. Downloaded RM and fixed all but 20 some of the low priority items which were mostly all McAfee and a few other recognizable items. Did the READ ME FIRST BEFORE ASKING FOR SUPPORT thru Bitdefender, but when Ravantivirus would never download properly, stopped at that point. Ran HJT and submitted the log to Help2Go Detective and HijackThis log file analysis. Neither found anything that needed attention. All of that has helped a great deal but the system is still a bit more sluggish than usual. It is most noticable when opening Quickbooks or AutoCAD. Both have always taken longer then others to open but, as in the past two weeks,they are still taking longer then usual and the cursor is sluggish while they are opening. Any ideas anyone would care to offer about what may a good next move toward cleaning this system will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, K.

 

Thank You D3m3nt3d. Here's my HJT log attached. K.

 

Thank You D3m3nt3d, appreciate your taking the time to consider my question and offer your advice. It's a big help to know the HJT log is clear. Thanks, K.

 

We are running AdAware SE Personal Build 1.06r1. In safe mode, nothing else running, AdAware scanned 64746 objects in 10 minutes. In normal mode, nothing else running, it scanned 65032 objects in 50 minutes. In both instances 0 critical objects and 7 mru's were found. Would anybody know if this time difference is normal? Thanks, K.

 

No, AdAware doesnt seem to be the only thing that has slowed recently. On this system SpyBot and AdAware both get used a great deal. Maybe a couple months ago, one of them, now I dont remember which, announced a new version that was designed to be bigger, better, and faster. We downloaded the new version and it lived up to the hype quite nicely. Scan time seemed to have been halved. A few weeks later tho, something changed. It seemed SpyBot and AdAware were now running slower than ever, as was the opening of Quickbooks and AutoCAD. Both have always opened much slower then most other programs, but now they were noticably slower too. Thats when I started on my cleaning rampage. With help from people in this group and the software group, and doubling our RAM to 256, most functions are blazing along quite nicely. Quickbooks and AutoCAD still open slowly but probably are back to the normal slow. However SpyBot and AdAware seem to be scanning slower than ever. SpyBot uses enough resources when scanning that it slows whatever else I may have running during its scan. Trying to run anything else while AdAware is scanning is almost impossible. The cursor is unbelievably sluggish and responses to clicks are almost nonexistant. Is it possible that all these symptoms point to some correctable problems? Thanks, K.

 

Thanks D3m3nt3d. Attached is the WinPFind log. K.

 

D3m3nt3d, system.tom, user.tom, and Hosts are now in the recycle bin. The Host file is an old problem. I had forgotten about it until this situ came up. Some time ago, a couple years maybe, to solve a popup and home page hijack problem, we had to delete some files from our Host file. A few months ago, during a stubborn cleaning problem I decided to check out our Hosts file. C:\WINDOWS\Hosts was there but the icon was no longer a Notepad, it was now a Windows Media Player and when clicked on the WMP came up followed by a note saying something about WMP cant read the file. I deleted that Hosts file, created a new, blank, Notepad Hosts file and installed it in C:\WINDOWS. A few shutdowns later when I checked on it again, it had changed to a WMP file again. I deleted it and created a new one. It changed to a WMP file too. Because of all this, when the WinPFind log showed buddy.exe and C:\WINDOWS\system.tom in the Hosts file and I tried to open it to delete the two files, the WMP came up followed by the Cant Do This window, I simply sent the Hosts file to the Recycle Bin. Then I did a search in Find for buddy.exe and found nothing. Have I followed your instructions properly? Appreciate your help. K.

 

Just did another WinPFind scan. Found three instances of buddy.exe in the WinDir folder. Any chance this could be causing me problems? Thanks, K.

 

Thank You D3m3nt3d for your response. This is where my my compuliteracy skill rear it's ugly head. The WinPFind log shows a buddy.exe in each of C:\WINDOWS\USER.DAT, C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.DAT, and C:\WINDOWS\ShellIconCache. Via Windows Explorer, I click c>Windows and scroll to User.dat, System.dat and ShellconCache. User.dat and System.dat both open in Wordpad and they're mostly boxes and double dot y's. ShellconCashe opens, or trys to open in Window Media Player. To delete the buddy.exe's, do I simply delete each of those files? Appreciate your help, K.

 

Here's my WinPFind log from this morning.K.

 

The reboot to Safe Mode and delete the ShellIconCache went smooth. Opened back up in normal mode, downloaded Ewido Security Suite. Installation failed and a window came up explaining Ewido needs Windows 2000 or better and we are 98SE - OOPS, forgot to mention that. Appreciate your help and patience. K.

 

Thanks D3m3nt3d. Downloaded SpySweeper, rebooted in safe mode, scanned with SpySweeper and removed the seven items it listed then saved logfile, still in safe mode scanned with Hijack This and saved logfile. Both are attached. Normally would have cleaned with CCleaner before scans, didnt this time. K.

 

Appreciate your taking a look at my scanlogs. Most operations seem to be back to normal. Opening programs like Quickbooks and AutoCAD are still slower then usual and SpyBot still slows to a crawl at CoolWWWSearch. After the SpySweeper scan I started a SpyBot scan again. When CoolWWWSearch was encountered, the scan slowed to a crawl like usual and I ended the scan. I timed it once previously. It took over an hour to scan those 3500 or so files. AdAware still runs slower then usual but nothing like the slowdown at SpyBot. Thanks, K.