Re: Progressive slowing - a chronic condition

From: Steve (none_at_email.com)
Date: 08/16/04 

Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 23:13:47 -1000

Try uninstall NAV and see how. I've heard similar complaints about NAV.

If you worry about being attacked by virus, don't go online for that brief
period.

also Steve

"Steve" <Steve@weirdstreet.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:cfd22b$id8$1@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk...
> Can anyone comment on or explain the following?
>
> 1. I bought a new 2.8 GHz laptop in January. Windows XP. Performance was
> never great, but I noticed perceptible slowing by about March.
>
> 2. Having experienced similar progressive slowing with my last computer, I
> felt suspicious and took a few rough timings... The time it took for menus
> to appear, for example.
>
> 3. Now, I've been using computers for around 15 years and have NEVER
before
> had to worry about how long it took for menus to appear!!!
>
> 4. I reappraised the situation this week. Here's what I found.
> a. In March, it took (near as I could estimate it) about half a second
for
> the Accessories submenu to reveal from the Start menu. (I chose this
because
> it's reasonably large and doesn't change.) I timed this immediately after
a
> boot up.
> b. It now takes more than a full second for the same submenu to reveal
> under the same circumstances.
> c. A music programme which ran beautifully back in January no longer runs
> without the sound completely breaking up and repeating. I'm no expert in
> this, but my guess is the problem is it's using virtual memory and the
> programme's having to wait for the disk to catch up. Whatever, it didn't
> have to do this under the same circumstances back in March.
> d. Even my word processor is slowing to a standstill. It can sometimes
take
> nearly a second for a single key to register.
>
> 5. My computer does NOT have a virus. That is, I have had a fully updated
> NAV installed and active from the start. So, if I do have a virus, it must
> be one that has escaped Symmantec's attention since January. I also use
> RegScrubXP to keep the registry trim, and manually trim down the prefetch
> directory.
>
> 6. It seems to me there are only two possibilities.
> a. There's something wrong with the computer hardware.
> b. There's something wrong with the operating system.
>
> 7. The fact that I noticed a similar effect with my last computer (Pentium
> 2, 333MHz running Windows 98) might suggest it isn't the computer, unless
> it's a problem with Intel chipsets generally. It seems more likely it is
> something to do with the operating systems.
> 8. Microsoft/Intel have been accused of bloating software to reduce
computer
> lifetimes.
> I don't know anything about this, and don't make any such accusation. But
> Whatever is going on here, it seems clear something somewhere's getting
> progressively clogged up.
> What?
> Either someone with too much power is doing something very cynical, or
> someone with too great a monopoly is producing substandard software.
>
>