Re: Windows XP Pro system has slowed to a crawl...

Sorry that it has taken me so long to report on this situation, but I did
have the opportunity to analyze the entire situation once again at my wife's
office today. Here is a brief report:

Everything still runs INCREDIBLY SLOW -- no change in the launching and/or
running of programs, for instance -- when operating in Safe Mode (without
networking). There is absolutely no change whatsoever in the speed of this
system when operating in Safe Mode. (Molasses in January!)

I'm assuming that this points more towards a hardware problem rather than a
software problem...?

In running Process Explorer, I could not find more than a couple of
processes that were unnecessary/unidentified. After stopping these processes
there was no change in overall performance. None whatsoever. (But then again,
considering the system operates the same in Safe Mode, this is no big
surprise.)

Quitting both Spyware Doctor and ThreatFire did not change the performance
of the system at all.

Bottom line: nothing seems to improve the speed/performance of this system.

There was only one process, by the way, that I couldn't identify (going to
www.processlibrary.com or searching on Google): lap.exe -- does anyone happen
to know what this is all about? Some sites are reporting it as potential
spyware, other sites reported as a virus, still other sites say it's not
harmful and part of the system software. The listed manufacturer -- through
Process Explorer -- is Dell Computer.

When this process was taken out of the equation -- manually stopping the
process in Process Explorer -- nothing changed with the performance of the
system, by the way.

Thanks again!



"Terry R." wrote:

The date and time was 9/3/2008 7:55 PM, and on a whim, husky86 pounded
out on the keyboard:

I've presently exhausted all ideas about tackling this ongoing situation, so
I thought I would turn to this forum to see if anyone has any ideas. Here's
the problem:

In my wife's office at work she is using a Dell OptiPlex 8200 system
(Pentium 4, 1 GB RAM, Windows XP Professional (Service Pack 3), 80 GB hard
drive (60% full)). During the past couple of months, her system has
experienced a TREMENDOUS slowdown. The best way to describe it is that it's
like trying to move through "molasses in January".... it just takes forever
to accomplish anything like loading applications, installing or uninstalling
programs, completing tasks within applications, etc.

Here are the steps that I've taken to address this problem:

1. Ran a complete spyware check with full version of Spyware Doctor.
(Nothing found.)
2. Ran a complete virus and rootkit check with PC Tools ThreatFire. (Nothing
found.)
3. Defragmented the hard drive.
4. Ran latest version of CCleaner to clean up underlying System and Registry
processes. (This process found a number of things to clean up, including with
the Registry, but the overall speed was not improved... at all!)
5. Made sure that Windows XP Professional has all the latest updates. (Did
this prior to installing Service Pack 3, not the other way around.)
6. Installed Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel. Turned off all unnecessary
processes associated with startup.

Presently we are running Spyware Doctor (all the time). Turning Spyware
Doctor off (disabling) doesn't make any difference.

We are also running ThreatFire. Like with Spyware Doctor, disabling
ThreatFire doesn't make any difference either.

My wife is connected to a small network with 2 other desktop computers
through a Linksys router (the other 2 computers are also Dell OptiPlex 8200
systems, identical to hers as far as the configuration noted above). The
other 2 computers in the office are not experiencing any problems whatsoever
with speed slowdowns. We have played around with the settings associated with
the network, e.g. sharing certain folders, etc., but changing the settings
doesn't seem to make any difference with regard to overall speed. We don't
think that it is a network problem.

If anyone has any ideas as to how we might approach this problem, please
pass them along. Much appreciated!

What processes are running all the time? SWD takes a huge resource hit.
I can't believe disabling doesn't make "any" difference. I'm not
familiar with TF so I can't comment on it. Were any drivers updated
recently? It's not unusual to have buggy drivers.

On one network I admin, we've been going through and replacing slow
5,400 rpm drives with 7,200 rpm on laptops and workstations and
reinstalling XP slipstreamed with SP3 and all apps. It's been making a
huge difference to the users.

I would try to identify everything running in the background. I would
disconnect from the network and test how it runs standalone. Does it
work considerably faster in Safe Mode?

Report back,

--
Terry R.

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