[Grimm]

so everyone has expirienced a slow computer right?

well i think most of u know my sysem back to front with how many times i bother u guys about it, but its getting slower again. and the basic course of action with this computer is to just get slower and slower with progressing months. i dont know wut i do to it, but wutever crap is on it just brings it down. meanwhile, my sister, who is on the same hard drive with a different partition has been the same quick speed since i made the partition and installed XP for her.

so ive spent the last month or so grabbing a bunch of cleaning utilities, like SpeedUpMyPC 3, and magic speed. both made minor speed increases, but nothing mind blowing.

im thinking of another system reinstall, but theres more problems with that. all my boot files are all skewed cuz of friggin windows vista which now shut itself down cuz i didnt activate it. so i dont think i can wipe my partition or the vista partiton and still get the computer to start


bottom line, anyone have ANY idea at all to get this computer to mvoe like a fresh install?

also, if anyone recognizes any of these programs, can u tell me if its safe to remove them:
ABBYY Finereader 6
Adobe Color Common Settings
Adobe Extendscript toolkit 2
Apple mobile device support
ATI software uninstall utility
ATI control panel
Bonjour
Dell Resource CD
FLAC Frontend
HP Photo and imaging 4.1
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Hotfix
Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
Microsoft compression client pack 1.0
Microsoft Silverlight
Microsoft Tool Web package : EXCTRLST.EXE
Microsoft user-made driver framework feature pack 1.0
Viewpoint media player
windows installer cleanup

thanks for any help

[FlapJack23]

Most of those you shouldn't remove.

[Richard]

well now we lost both our resident IT gals its down to the rest of us lol

All id say is not what you have installed as such but what is processinga nd open when you start up..

Also I am heavily unconvinced by these speed up your PC apps off the net.

what are your recouses like?

[Grimm]

i dont think my resources are too bad, windows hasnt yelled at me about how im using them too much.

the speed up thing wasnt bad actually. it cost 30 bucks, but i just jacked it. its able to efragment and recover use dmemory and make it into free memeory. plus it can shred files and remove the files that programs sometimes leave aorund wen they are removed.

for startup, i removed almost all startup items. the onyl things that start up (that i know of) are windows desktop, macafee and bittorrent

[Richard]

you might not need the pc to quote your memory downage

why dont u check and post up a link

[Grimm]

what do u mean?

[Richard]

I mean it might not display a message saying what your resource usage is

so why not post a screen shot

[Grimm]

im not sure if this is what u want, but heres my task manager showing all of my processes:



also i forgot to add, my start menu has recently stopped holding onto my recently used programs, all it shows are the programs ive pinned to it. i was thinking a virus but idk

[Richard]

To be fair Mcafee runs like a 2 legged dog.

Your better off with AVG or Avast!

Is this on idle boot? Id turn off itunes unless u need it as and when as with all the apple stuff, again runs heavy on the pc.

you done a spyware check

[Chantelle]

I would do a throurough scans

Are you downloading lots of P2P stuff there?

Id tend to agree with the McAfee comment also.

Best thing to do is go from basless to busy, so try removing alot of thing used to start up

If thats your startup its very busy, mostly Apple and McAfee products

[Grimm]

i would use avast, but my mom wont let me ever since the worm slipped thru. it wasnt actually avasts fault, my firewall got shutdown by a very basic virus, which then allowed the worm to enter, but she still believes its unreliable. so im stuck with mcafee, which actually isnt too bad.

i am downloading a lot of p2p, but nothing questionable. just music stuff. the startup u saw was after about half an hour of normal operation however i just booted now and i am looking at the same amount of items in the processes list.....

i have already removed quite a lot of start up items, how would i get most of those processes to stop what theyre oing if theyre not needed? and to make it so they dont start up again every time i boot

[Richard]

Id say Macafee is still a slow program

although I think this is best left with chantelle on this

although she dont visit here so often anymore as you may have seen on the £ thread. Plus she is workin in Manchester for 3 days tomorrow

[Chantelle]

Worm would penetrate sa you say via a firewall.

reason I ask is there are things going on there which could be worms or PSP..

How did the virus get in then?

I will say MacAfee is a slow product, and is somewhat combersome.

I think you need to drill down further.. all these apple and p2p and macafee is going to make any machine feel combersome.

Especially whne there is a Macfee update it seems to get a bit hungry..

But id do your low level checks, like spyware do them throughroughly, then remove everything from startup.. remove your cable to the net and then see hwo it responds.. without anything.

Problem is with all these prgrams your getting, they just make things worse.. and p2p going doesnt help at all.

[FlapJack23]

AVG is free and also is really good. You might also look at what else your doing when it slows down. For example, my laptop slows down like crazy when I'm listening to audio, and I can't even watch videos. It's a Pentium III, so the processor might have something to do with it.

[Grimm]

mine doesnt get slower as it goes, it gets faster. i boots insanely fast, but from the welcome screen to when i can fully control my computer is a lag of about a full 2 minutes. and if i open up firefox after that 2 minutes, it takes another 3 minutes before i can get google to come up. but as i use the comp, and after about a half hour its basically up to speed. i left the comp on over night and today it runs quick as can be.

again, i need thorough help on how im gonna get macaffe and apple to shut up. i need stuff like itunes, so how can i tell apple programs to stop bogging down my comp wen i use them a lot?

[Chantelle]

Startup slow down

seriously I bet thats Mcafee

[jawfin]

First Flapp, update your gfx card driver.
OK Grimm, McAfee is absolute garbage, but hey you're stuck with it.
You'll find you slow welcome screen to control is your DCOM Server service, unfortunately you need to leave it set to automatic; too much stuff relies on it.
You can get a decent registry scanner that looks for and kills unneeded DCOM processes, that is DCOM server hooks that are not required. Ditto with unneeded OLE hooks and other techs like that which can help with computer speed. Even culling unneeded fonts can do wonders.
It may pay to run a http://secunia.com/software_inspector/ scan to ensure all your BHO's and other browser plug-ins are hardened, secure (don't download their beta scanner it doesn't work, just do the on-line scan).
Worst case, google "rootkit scanners" and download and run a scan for rootkits; usually installed by drive-by webpages. Even google themselves have be caught out with their adsense search results (which are on basically every page you visit these days) have been compromised with drive-by installs.
When all else fails, backup personal files, format, install OS, run updates, install ur softs, restore files, and ghost the drive for a quick recovery next time. I personally recommend buying a new HDD, making it the primary and install a fresh OS on that. And make ur current drive as D:.
That'll keep you busy.
Oh also test your on-line security with http://www.grc.com and follow the prompts to ShieldsUp, scan all ports etc.

[Chantelle]

Unfortunateley a new HDD might not be an option, as he said his sister is using the same pc on another partition. Also isnt his hard drive new?

I suspect its application, security or profile.

His last post to me seems alarming of application stick

This I have found in his situation would be likeley MacAfee update or even windows update sticking


My initial advice would be look at the processes and recources during this period and see what is sticking

if its something like svchost etc go to command prompt and

tasklist /svc you can see the processes relating to it there.

Of course a fromat is a noption but would be good to try solve the problem first.

[jawfin]

You're right, mine was a more of a generic reply.
A bootup tracker program can show where the big delay is.
I still suspect it is the DCOM Server; which can be disabled but you lose things like explorer extensions, for example personalised hard drive icons in the registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\ etc.
But what I said about a good reg. scanner stands, and the secunia scan and grc test.

[Melissa]

whenevr i have done grc from work I always get 443 is that right? my boss seems to think so

[Chantelle]

Its probably for OWA, I imagine thats supposed to be like that.

[Grimm]

believe me if i could format i would. but as of now i have no idea where my 3 boot files are. theyre strewn all over the 3 drives, its quite annoying

[Chantelle]

You seem to have the most insane setup.,.

Why dont you all use the same OS and just have your own profiles? you can protect and secure your own files privateley etc.

[jawfin]

I hope your 443 is at least closed if not stealthed.
Windows XP firewall doesn't not protect 443, neither do several hardware modems/routers.
If its closed that's tollerable, but still not recommended.
Its the common port for secure html, eg. your bank, paypal, ebay would use it. Whenever the domain is something like https://www.... the s after the http indicates the secure link. Its all very complex at the low level, RSA security etc.
Best bet is read what Steve says about it at http://www.grc.com/port_443.htm

[Chantelle]

no it needs to be available

its owa

she isnt using xp firewall its a DMZ and a PIX

I think it is correct to see it if it was stealthed then OWA probably wouldnt work