Thrashing/Freezing

Low end Compac PC. DSL connected 512meg ram 80 G hardrive. I'll have to check processor speed etc when I get home.

Hard drive is what I have learned is thrashing. It seems to run almost all of the time. I can hear it especially if I save or open anew program. I am not a power user, I may have Outlook,Excel Word and the internet up at the same time. I have Norton and Web seeper. Not long ago your forum helped me check for malware and cleaned some errors up. Now the PC is slow to run, slow to shut down or swithc users. I have several processes running at the same time. Is there a easy way to eliminate what is causing the problem? I have downloaded from Systeminternals there File mon and process mon applications, but I am not sure what I am looking for. When I use msconfig to start only the minimum, the thrashing goes away, but so does a lot of other things.

Point me in the right direction. The answers are probably already here, I am just having a hard time finding them. Crap cleaner and defraging the disk doesn't seem to help.

Thanks

 

This definetly sounds like to many programs running and using all the resources(Norton is famous for this)

This is my opinion... dump Norton completely...use AVG anti virus (free ware-extremely reliable).. for your firewall ,use sygate personal firewall..
along with spy bot search and destroy and ad aware to keep your pc running clean

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Ad-Aware_SE_Personal_d506.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/SpyBot-Search_&_Destroy_Tools_d2471.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Sygate_Personal_Firewall_Free_d3356.html

 

Is there a better way to disable start up items than using msconfig? I had used that during the summer when I was clearing up some malware and one of the posters said that was not the best way to do it. A lot of programs I don't use hardly at all and I don't know the best way to keep them shut off till I need them.

thanks

 

I downloaded the startup program and will try to not start some of the uneeded programs later to see how that works.

Thanks

 

One more question about this startup program. If I desect a startup program to run today, and decide it really needed to run, will the box still show up the next time I boot the machine so I can select it to start at startup?

 

Hi. Startup.cpl is a really proggie for controlling what starts up with Windoze. Also, WinPatrol is available in a free version which is really excellent, and which gives you that capability.

 

I still have the problem with most of the small stuff off. I am going to get rid of Norton and another Internet permsion tool I have to limit the time my kid can be on line without me watching over her.

I have downloaded File mon from systme internals and I am going to see what the processes running so much are and try to eliminate them.

Thanks for the help so far.

 

I did some checking on the processes that were running and found one called iexplorer.exe. Some virus sites say that is a virus. I will be looking at how to get rid of this now.

 

Tim, I am away from home. I will try to find where it is.

I guess I should have known that after looking at hundreds of posts looking to see what all my processes were that are running. Most of the sites said a virus could be legit depending on where they were located at.

Symptons described were as mine are, very sluggish, slow to open programs, mouse freezes, and the hard drive runs almost constanly. I know this can be fixed instead of replaced.

I will find the location tomorrow and try to post it here.

Thanks

 

I am at work so I will do this tomorrow. Thanks

 

Nothing found by Bit Defender, Now in order to get rid of Norton, There are many processes running that have thier name on them. But first I think I should get another virus program that is free.

 

Downloading AVG Anti virus now.

 

Life comes at you fast. I will reopen a post after I get time again.

Thanks

 

You can probably close this thread. I took the PC to someone as I could not find time to dink with it. It came back , after 65 bucks gone, the task manager, the comand prompt and the registry editor had been disabled by the administrator. 65 bucks and I come home with the same problems and another virus. I finally did a recovery on it and deleted norton, added AVG free and will be more careful of where I visit.

Thanks for the help.
Roger