XP/Vista running slowly, not sure why?

Ok so I have Vista Home Premium 32bit and XP Home 32bit installed on my laptop (Asus M70Vm).

I have been using the laptop since I got it in September last year for an average of 12hrs each day.

But over the last few months I've been finding that Vista/XP are slowing down, particularly XP.

I frequently get "not responding" showing on explorer windows that I have open and in general both OS seem to be less responsive than they have been.

I have a number of apps installed but I have pretty much all of them installed in Win 7 RC as well and Win 7 RC isn't as sluggish.

I have run virus scans for trojans/rootkits over the last week using Spybot, Kaspersky, AVG Free 8.5 and Malware Bites Anti Malware but none of the apps came up with anything, aside from the usual tracking cookies so I don't think the issue is a virus.

I have defragged my HDD using jkdefrag and I've done the pagefile as well using pagedefrag. I've got about 20gb left on each partition as well.

Does anyone know what could be causing the issue, could it be a sign that the laptop is about to "die" on me or could it just be something that I have installed causing it? I have a number of Stardock apps installed and a few of them running, including Cusor XP and Windowblinds in Vista/XP could it simply be that which is causing the slowdown?

Are there any ways of finding out what is causing the slowdown aside from what I have already done and not doing a clean install or uninstalling any apps?

If anyone could shed some light on this for me I'd be very grateful.

Thanks in advance for any advice on this.

 

Most standard utility defraggers aren't good enough to really do a good job on your drive, and the also don't perform a defrag of the Paging/Index file or the Boot Sector, since they only run under Windows. Yet it's those thing that will slow your system down if not maintained properly.

AVG is a major resource hog - lose it.

2 programs you either should have or should try - Memory Boost, which is a RAM reclamation tool, and Diskeeper, which is what most of us in the IT industry use for a defrag utility. Read these 2 articles - both programs have full trial versions.

The other thing that will kill your system is dirt and dust - if you don't blow out your system intakes and exhausts at least monthly (few do) and the system every 6-12 months, then dust buildup will cause heating issues which in turn will affect your overall system performance.

 

Hmm I tried Diskeeper on my old Acer 9302 and it didn't really help, in fact it caused slowdowns on it...

I have noticed that AVG is a resource hog, I removed it after doing the scans.

Anyway have you any tips for getting dust out of my system?

 

I'd recommend Avira as it's very lightweight. Another option is to perform a fresh install of Vista. I typically do this every 4 months or so. Rejuvenates the computer.

 

You need to find out what is actually consuming the CPU cycles. The best way to do that is go to the Sysinternals web site and get a copy of process explorer. With that tool you can readily see which process or service is hogging the processor.

Gary

 

1. Remove all of your antivirus or spyware and keep the one that you actually use. Installing many spyware or antivirus will slow your computer down to a crawl. If you feel that you don't get viruses at all, you can remove the antivirus(es) completely and it'll speed up your computer by a lot.

2. Windows blindes..etc with modded theme, especially aero clones will suck your computer resources dry. Remove them if you don't need them.

3. Defrag your MFT. As hdd fills up, MFT gets fragemented which reduce the hdd performance by a lot. Normal defrag tool cannot MFT (master file table). You can use a trial version of diskeeper to defrag the MFT. While you're at it, optimize your hdd with diskeeper by enabling "IFAST" and "autodefrag". Leave your comptuer on for a night and let Diskeepr automatically defrag.

4. Turn off unnecessary services.

5. Keep your cpu and gpu from throttling. When your cpu gets hot, it reduce its performance in order to keep the temperature down. Keeping it cool will help keep the performance up.

6. Try eboostr/readyboost with fast flash storage.

I have never used memory boost. Usually when memory leak causes a slowdown, all I do is restart the computer. Typically, I restart my computer once a week so performance is always at its best.

 

AVG is a resource hog so remove that and Those stardock apps can slow you down especially that windowsblinds, do you actually need it or can you do without those stardock apps?also check your event viewer for any errors. also limit your startups and dont mess with Vista's services but third party ones.

 

Ooh no I can't be doing without Windowblinds, desktopX, objectdock or cursorXP.

I think I worked out what the problem was, at least XP seems to be running a bit better now.

I had the themes service still enabled, I've now set that to disabled because when running windowblinds it's not required and actually slows the system down, apparently.

As for Vista, gone, I have W7 64bit RC 1 instead, might as well I didn't use Vista all that much.

I also gave the laptop a bit of a clean out and that seems to have helped also.

And I used W7's in-built defrag system so that may have helped as well, although none of the drives showed up as more than 5% fragged.

Overall it seems to be running better, same performance in games but that's to be expected. Monitor on the other hand seems to have a faulty connection somewhere...

Thanks for the tips though guys.

 

Huh? AVG a resource hog? Not in any of the side by side comparisons I have seen documented. Why do you say this?

Gary

 

Vista built in defrag tool can defragment MFT fragments.
Source : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942092

 

Cheers! We are one of a kind.
Sometime, fixing little problems here and there are really time consuming.
Moreover, some problems are extremely difficult to fix and cannot be fix.

Newbie method:
So, a fresh install of Windows Vista is a brilliant choice. I know that, this solution is not recommended by those "Computer Pros".
But re-install of Windows is less time consuming than searching those viruses and errors.
You just need to back-up the documents and stuffs you want.
After that, re-install the Windows and you are done.

 

Only the built in defrag in Windows Vista or later can defrag MFT. The OP mainly uses XP.

 

Can Piriform Defraggler and Tune Up Utilities Defraggler defrag the MTF?

 

Fools use AVG.. It's a sh*tty antivirus, plus yes its a hog.. If you want something free, then go with Avast.

 

Actually recently I've been using Win 7 more than XP. So although I do use XP as my main OS that doesn't necessarily mean I use it the most all the time.

As for AVG, yeah I've noticed that since the versions after 7.5 came out my systems (both Acer in sig and the Asus in sig) do take a bit of a performance hit, they seem to be rather sluggish and tend to suffer from "not responding" problems a lot more, probably because it's scanning in the background all the time. I use Kaspersky's KIS 7.5/8.0 instead and even then I don't have it running on startup, I manually start it a few minutes after startup.

I only use AVG as a second opinion if I think I've got something and even then I uninstall it straight after, and usually it doesn't find anything anyway.

Since I turned off the Themes service in XP though XP seems to be much better in terms of responsiveness and speed so I think that was the problem, the combination of windowblinds and the themes service.

 

Do you have any FACTS to back that up? Or are we left to just take your word for it as if it were some sort of fact?

From task manager my System Idle time is 37:18:24, AVG is at 00:07:28 of cumulative CPU use over that time. That amounts to about 2231 minutes of idle time and 7 minutes of AVG using the CPU in that time. For a whopping .3 persent of my CPU use. Not much of a hog of the CPU. Looking at the memory stats and disk IO use, it doesn't seem to be using much of either of those either. This leads me to ask, what measure are you using and how do the others (I think you mentiond Avast) measure up? I'm more than happy to review numbers if you have any to provide.

Gary