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    Desktop - XP Pro SP3 - become slow for no apparent reason..

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by fonduekid, Oct 16, 2008.

  1. fonduekid

    fonduekid JSUTAONHTERBIRCKINTEHWLAL

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    Hi People,

    Recently, like in the last few weeks, I have noticed my desktop (XP Pro SP3, see sig) become slow for no apparent reason...

    I have done everything possible in terms of cleaning, defrag, multiple AV / anti-spyware scan (its all clean) and such..

    Further, today for example, when I clicked to open "My Computer", it took like ages to finish "searching for items..." and show up the drives and such. (This is not often, but just random....)

    I don't remember this desktop ever being so slow or getting bogged down sometimes... Been working on this for 3 years, and its always been fast, responsive and in fact, not a single Blue Screen (one out of the only two we have from MaxData here in our department, the other is with the IT admin.)

    Any ideas?

    And oh btw, checked in the event logs, no errors or warning or anything of that sort!!

    At the moment, just living with it.. not a big deal, but sometimes its annoying, when I have to look for something in a hurry!!

    Edit: 'cleaning' > meant disk clean up.
     
    fonduekid, Oct 16, 2008
    #1
  2. daljeet

    daljeet Notebook Evangelist

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    Did you tried disk cleanup ?
     
    daljeet, Oct 16, 2008
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  3. fonduekid

    fonduekid JSUTAONHTERBIRCKINTEHWLAL

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    ^ yep!

    10 char
     
    fonduekid, Oct 16, 2008
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  4. kegobeer

    kegobeer 1 hr late but moving fast

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    Have you tried uninstalling your antivirus, rebooting, and then reinstalling the antivirus? I've seen this problem before with programs that load at boot and run in the background, so the uninstall/reinstall might be worth a try.
     
    kegobeer, Oct 16, 2008
    #4
  5. fonduekid

    fonduekid JSUTAONHTERBIRCKINTEHWLAL

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    Thanks, mate.

    Yeah, I am planning to do this, later today... And also try uninstalling few other prog' that I am not using anymore (though they aren't loading at boot!!!) Anyway, let me see how it goes...

    Edit: Tried it, but no effect... its slow, as it was this morning. Strange. May be once I finish work today, will do another disk cleanup and defrag may be! Let's see.
     
    fonduekid, Oct 16, 2008
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  6. jisaac

    jisaac Notebook Deity

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    Complete the XP tips and tweaks guide in my signature. This guide is now included as a minor sticky in these forums... You should notice a nice speed boost .
    cheers
     
    jisaac, Oct 16, 2008
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  7. fonduekid

    fonduekid JSUTAONHTERBIRCKINTEHWLAL

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    Okie, thanks... will check it out this evening.
     
    fonduekid, Oct 16, 2008
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  8. maxsquared

    maxsquared Notebook Consultant

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    Did you check task manager and see what's the CPU and ram level?
     
    maxsquared, Oct 16, 2008
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  9. makaveli72

    makaveli72 Eat.My.Shorts

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    maxsquared makes a good suggestion...sort the CPU and Mem. usage to see what takes up the most resources and also look for weird or abnormal process names that you're not familiar with and look it up in google. May be malware or the like causing the slow down....

    Edit: BTW nice website max.
    (+ rep in 24hrs.)
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 8, 2015
    makaveli72, Oct 16, 2008
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  10. Greg

    Greg Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    What updates were most recently applied? Undo them.

    I wouldn't be surprised if MS's updates are hurting XP.
     
    Greg, Oct 17, 2008
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  11. jibberjabbers

    jibberjabbers Notebook Geek

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    The XP updates such as SP3 and the most recently "KXXXXX" contains some anti-pirating bots basically voiding any illegallly downloaded vista, xp and office softwares..

    My neighbor came by today and asked for my XP disc because his vista locked up on him. haha after he applied windows update...
     
    jibberjabbers, Oct 17, 2008
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  12. fonduekid

    fonduekid JSUTAONHTERBIRCKINTEHWLAL

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    Task manager shows around 30 processes... mostly small one'.. the biggest in terms of mem usage is firefox at the moment.. But yeah, I will check on this and try turning off some stuff...

    I haven't seen this yet, Greg. I will check the update history... but I would it would mostly be the updates for office and other recommended M$ updates..

    I remember from couple of weeks back there was some update for .NET framework 3 or something, which actually went on well, but upon restart the system was messed up.. the explorer was not running and I had to manually start explorer.exe... but I have uninstalled that update since then...
     
    fonduekid, Oct 17, 2008
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  13. Necromancer90

    Necromancer90 Notebook Consultant

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    Is there possibly something wrong with your memory? I'm not to good with these problems, but maybe you bumped your RAM or something, and XP isn't working with your memory correctly? :confused:
     
    Necromancer90, Oct 17, 2008
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  14. fonduekid

    fonduekid JSUTAONHTERBIRCKINTEHWLAL

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    Thanks ^ But I have no idea...

    In any case, I tried a complete disk cleanup and removed some more unnecessary programs, defrag and such..... Still it was kinda not responsive as before.

    So decided to change the RAM as I found some new RAM stick' lying around in the IT room.. Let' see how it goes. I didn't decide to chage it because I figured out there is something wrong with the RAM but just to try.
     
    fonduekid, Oct 17, 2008
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  15. fonduekid

    fonduekid JSUTAONHTERBIRCKINTEHWLAL

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    Ok, so we replaced the RAM... and it feels a lot better now (and the IT guy told me may be the RAM was kinda 'getting old'.. he will stick it in another comp, and see if it was the issue!!!).... :) Thanks people, for your suggestions :)
     
    fonduekid, Oct 17, 2008
    #15