Windows XP forum: XP running painfully slow

ok well tron posted a message telling me that he fixed his by using a program to stop bad hard drive filesform shutting down, what program did he use? somone help

if you use onboard sound or joystick this can cause xp to run slow try fitting a sound card and disable the onboard sound, this worked for me...

Hi
Here are two site that i go to when i need help
with windows XP

http://www.tweakxp.com/default.aspx

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp.htm

Have fun
Paul

have you tried running an anti ad program....my computer was horribly slow till I found ad aware.
I update almost every day, and get about 20 ad cookies...when there gone, I speed up. I hope that helps.

try this

Go to Start > Run > Type in services.msc
Find and disable SSDP Discovery Services
(Universal Plug and Play related)

won't stop Plug and Play from working. good explanation can be found at theis site http://grc.com/default.htm

worked great for me when cpu usage was in the 90's for explorer.exe all the time

No its not a defective processor. Check the motherboard jumpers for the Front Side Bus. Its running at 100Mhz, as soon as you change the jumper to 133Mhz it will read like its supposed to.

The problem with WINDOWS XP it runs painfully slow because of useless and often not used services running in the background. If you go to your control panel under administrative options then service you will see a list of services that are started. Wireless services on desktop is not required so disable them. If you are not networking shut down all networking functions. Networking zaps alot of ram.

Also click on start, run, (in the box type - MSCONFIG), CHOOSE SELECTIVE STARTUP GROUP, SELECT BOTH PROCESS, SELECT LOAD SYSTEM SERVICES AND SELECT ORGINAL BOOT.

Now click on the top where it says startup. Clear all the boxes and click apply. These startup items loads each and every time you boot. Not necessary. The misconception is they are needed. In fact they will load up but not applied. They will only gear in when needed.

Now the other thing is keep you computer clean. Defrag everyday. Get Ad-aware 6.0 it is free from shareware and it hunts out spy ware or spy bot is good too. Both are free. Another good utility it Ashampoo. This will help clean your computer. You can use it free for your application but it requires the steps to be repeated. You can buy it and it works good. Black Ice Deffender is a good program to buy.

Also if you are running Norton Antivirus or System it will slow down your system. Do not automatically startup this service. Here is why. If you are browsing email then yes use your virus protection. Also if you go to GRC.COM check to see if you are running stealth on the internet. GRC.com and go to SHIELDS UP. It will test your computer. It will tell you how to close ALL your ports so other computers can not see you.

Oh yeah, BLACK ICE a really good firewall.

Do a search on "Spybot" in Google to find a download site for Spybot. Download it and run it to remove spyware. If you have never run anything to clean off spyware this will almost certainly speed up your computer.

I've seen this several times lately and it's usually spyware. Go to pestpatrol.com and run their free PestScan utility and see what it finds. Unfortunately their removal tool isn't free, but it's cheap enough for what it does. It has removed pests that ad-aware and spybot haven't been able to touch.

Also, make sure your hard drive has at least about 200 megs of free space.

This is a indication that some process is running in the background. These processes will not show up in the regular ctrl alt del window. There is a tool called Process Explorer which will show you all of the processes running on your system. However I found that the tool called TCActive that comes with The Cleaner actually provides a better picture and allows me to kill any process I do not want running just as Process Explorer.

There is also a tool called Easy Cleaner which will get rid of all unecessary files on your system including those in your registery.

Do not depend on just a Virus Scanner no matter whoes it is also run The Cleaner, Adaware and Easy Cleaner.
You may have left over Gator and other malware pointers still sitting within your registry and other software Malware, Adware may be pointing to it.

Here is a suggestion to also expedite your scans for any virus or The Cleaner scan. Run Easy Cleaner first and get rid of all of those Internet Temp files that are not required. Easy Cleaner will tell you those it cannot delete. Easy Cleaner is a free tool my only suggestion is when you run it to delete Temp Internet files that you do not use the automatic button function because it has a habit of then sending the Index.dat file for IE to the trash can. Instead do the manual method and once all the files are listed do a Select All then locate the file Index and unselect it.

Anytime I run scanners or adaware type programs or the Easy Cleaner I always make it a habit to run scandisk to assure no files become unlinked. I also always run it before doing a defrag.

I have also found that the cleaner will find things that Trend Micro, McAfee and AVG virus scaanners do not. I have also found that The Cleaners TCMonitor is really a very usefull tool to run in the system tray as it alerts you anytime something is trying to write into your registry.

I think you will find that your problem is one where there are simply processes running that are not part of windows XP. The reason for this is that Intel processors are wait state processors which can only process one request at a time so when you have any malware type processes running it loads the processor down with too many request. This will not show up in CPU usage as a % because the process is waiting and repeatedly sending request to the CPU. I will assume you know where to find the software I have mentioned the only one you need to purchase for long term use is The Cleaner.

run AdAware 6.0 regularly? Almost derigeur for a sluggish machine

I think most of us have experienced these situations.

One of my remedies is the program System Mechanic. It has a 30 day free trial which gives you enough time to clean your registry, cookies, duplicate files, inactive links, rebuild links, etc., etc, etc.

Webdean@email.com

Have you configured your 'services' with the Black Viper site? He has been on the cable and satellite Tech TV show a couple of times, and is recommended by Nortons Symantec:

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

Black Viper seems to have sold his website to Network Solutions, which has been reconstructing it. It is currently unavailable.

seems his site is no longer active. Sure wish it was. He had some very good stuff.