Re: suddenly slow XP machine -- software or hardware?

Tech-Archive recommends: Speed Up your PC by fixing your registry

From: Kelly (kelly_at_mvps.org)
Date: 07/06/04 

Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 01:22:15 -0500

Hi Chris,

Run all of these, all of them....then repost. Good luck!

Cleaning Up XP: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_c.htm#cleanup 

-- 
All the Best,
Kelly
Microsoft-MVP Windows® XP
2004 Windows MVP "Winny" Award
Troubleshooting Windows XP
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com
Taskbar Repair Tool Plus!
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/taskbarplus!.htm
"Chris" <ijkdc@spamfree.hotmail.com> wrote in message 
news:20040706010328299-0500@msnews.microsoft.com...
> Hi there,
>  My girlfriend's Gateway has been running horribly lately.  It hasn't
> been crashing but it is taking forever to do just about anything.  It
> didn't used to be like this.  Launching applications takes forever and
> the hour glass comes up.
> I have run Spybot S&D on it again recently and also did a full system
> scan with Norton Anti-Virus (yuk!)and the latest defs.  Found nothing.
> But the thing practically crawls.  It's a 300SE I believe.  1.4Ghz
> Celeron.  It has 256MB RAM and a decent amount of free disk space.  I
> opened up Task Manager and whenever it's taking its sweet time to do
> something, the processor usage is pegged.  It seems like it's either the
> app or System Idle Process eating up all the cycles.  I've also checked
> the system logs and don't notice anything unusual.
> The only things I can think of are a possible hardware problem or
> Norton.  I wouldn't rule out either of them.  I have found NAV to be a
> horribly written piece of software.  It often has "internal errors" and
> "must close" and LiveUpdate never works -- I'm stuck downloading the
> update manually.  I've seen this on several computers.  The Gateway
> hasn't exactly seemed like a high-quality piece of equipment to me
> either.  At one point it would crash and then fail on the next boot and
> subsequent boots until you let it sit off for several hours.  I wasn't
> never able to locate the problem due to the transient nature of the
> failures.
> Anyone have an idea as to what could be causing this?  I think my next
> step will be to disable Norton's on-access scanning and see if that
> makes any difference.
>
> Any help would be appreciated!
>
>
> -Chris