Sudden PC slow down.

Hello, my PC sometimes just gets slow all of a sudden, I usually test it by extracting something with 7-zip, when the PC works fine, it decompresses at 10mb/sec , but then when it gets slow it decompresses at 600kb-1000kb/sec. And you can tell it's really slower on start up (when the windows XP logo appears after boot), games take so much longer to load.
I have tried defragging (and that took 15hrs the first time and then 12hrs), and it did nothing, I ran chkdsk and it took a long while too, and it found nothing wrong.
Also it gets "fixed" when I install XP again that XP works fine, if I boot the previous installation the problem is is till there of course, on that one. I have also tried the repair tool with the windows xp cd, and that fixed it, but I have to run that every week to keep the PC running fine. But it's not showing now on the repair list, so I'm hoping for a better solution.

I have also tried many anti-virus, anti-everything. So it's not malware.

It sometimes starts happening after a install, any kind of install, game, driver, and any other kind of software. And sometimes it even happens when I didn't install something, just after a reboot.

Hope someone can help me solve this, thank you.

 

Pull up your task manager and kill any processes that you don't need also disable any programs you don't use on start up.

 

Done that, tried disabling pretty much everything that isn't needed, but it still runs slow.

 

I have also tried many anti-virus, anti-everything. So it's not malware.

Could be conflicting remnants of virus programs. Many take special uninstall methods, just uninstalling with Windows won't do. What programs have you tried, what are you currently using, how much RAM do you have, do you have SP3, what other security programs have you and do you have, how is the performance in safe mode, what make and model of PC?

Sounds like some conflicts because when you repair, it runs fine for a while, then slows down again, correct?

 

I currently use AVG Free and spybot S&D for security.
Safe mode runs slow too.
And here's my PC specs.
Windows XP Profesional SP3.
1GB RAM.
Pentium 4 3.00GHz.
Mother ASUS P5V-VM ULTRA.


And yes, after a repair it runs fine for a week or two after if I'm lucky.

 

On the bottom of the Top Freeware Pics here at MG you will find tools for removal of Mcaffee and Norton, I find remnants of one or both of these programs on almost every computer I work on. This is a starting point.

Do you uses cCleaner, both the system cleaner and registry cleaner? Great program.

Any yellow flags in your device manager or events recorded in your admininstrive setting in the control panel?

HD size and usage?

How do you have AVG installed? It's turned into a bit of a resource hog but I still use it by custom installing and unchecking all the boxes except for the basic virus protection. Then it doesn't bog the system.

Then it would be time to look at your startup programs. You can copy and post a picture here from the startup tab under tools in cCleaner.:wave:wave

 

Just did that.

Yep, run it often.

Hmm, I just checked and there's something weird on the device manager.
Under "other devices"
There's two with a yellow "!"
System Interruption Controller.
Unkown Device.

And on the event recorder there's some red Xs, on "service control manager", "dcom", "sptd", "atapi".
And yellows on "USER32" and "disk".

HD is small, 150gb, I have about 40gb free.

Well, I never had problems with it. I tried others too.

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/4527/startup.gif
But like I said, I already tried disabling startup programs and services.

 

:waveI assume you are in a Spanish speaking region? (From your startup list)
I'd go to ASUS and run their driver wizard. Never used their but it looks helpful.

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx

I'm going to assume they'll detect what drivers are faulty/missing. Bad drivers can definitely give you erratic performance.

If you have probs with this in normal mode, try it in safe mode with networking, but I'm not certain if that will work.

In any case, getting rid of those warnings in the DM should be the first job. This is not an area of strength for me, if you continue to have driver problems, there is a driver forum here, but hopefully ASUS will get you fixed right.:wave

 

Just a thought.
In my experience AVG is pretty heavy on older machines.
I would suggest Avast, it generally seems much lighter.

Also I see you have Messenger opening with your PC, I would advise you to go into MSN settings and stop it from opening on start up, thats a big drag.
Same with Utorrent, you don't need these progs starting up with your PC.
Let your PC start and then open them.

Other than that, what Brandy said.

 

Yeah, I'm from Argentina =]

I'm sorry, but I can't seem to find the wizard your telling me to use, I searched that site but couldn't find, and the description asus gives on their files is not very helpful either.

Used avast, but a friend told me its one of the anti-virus with the most false-positives results. But I guess that's not so bad with some research after something pops up heh.
Well, thanks for the info.

 

I used to use AVG for years and found it was slowing me down as it got more complicated, swapped to Avast about 18 months ago, I never looked back.
It's caused me zero problems and kept me secure 99.999%
And it TALKS to you!!! :-D

 

On the ASUS site, click on new users start here.

And Ned I agree with you on the programs. But his complaint is erratic perfromance, and with the flags in his device manager, well that would explain it. But yes, I disable all that crap from the autoruns.:wave

 

Yeah I know, I wasn't trying to fix the exact problem as you have that under control

But since his specs are pretty low doing the things I mentioned will most likely speed things up in a big way.

Didn't mean to interfere....but you know what I'm like lol

 

All that did was take me to the motherboard driver & utilites download page, I already have the latest drivers.

edit: I reinstalled, and the yellow flags on the device manager are gone.
Performance still slow though.

 

Okay, using startup standalone;

http://majorgeeks.com/downloadget.php?id=4359&file=15&evp=9b9ae16f863c6455cb0822bf677d77dc

Save and run. In the HKLM tab, what is checked?

 

This:
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/4097/hklmrun.jpg

Ugh, something came up, and I won't have access to my PC for a while, so I guess this topic will remain inactive, I guess I'll bring it back up or something when I get back home.
Thanks for everything brandy.

 

I would try disabling alcmtr, skytel, nwiz, and definitely sunjavaupdater. If called for, any of these programs should still run, and if a problem is caused, you can easilt reenable. What do you use Skytel for? Looks to be a messaging system??

Else, as Ned suggested, dump AVG and install AVAST. I use AVG but I always do a custom install and then, when given the decision tree, I uncheck ALL boxes except for the first one, AVG antivirus. Their security suite in versions 8 and later are just to bloated.:wave:wave