Re: Windows XP high-end machine is terribly slow

First thing I would do is uninstall MacAfee (permanently) and replace it
with a less resource hogging AV app.

"Kunal Ashar" <KunalAshar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5EB380E5-439B-441D-AC4B-D904769D9E3D@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I have a Windows XP Pro SP2-based machine that is God-awfully slow. Here
are
the symptoms:

# Startup takes at least 4-5 mins after I type in my login
username/password
# While starting up, nothing responds anywhere, including on the taskbar,
and the system clock shows up after ages
# Starting up applications takes forever - simple apps like IE or Firefox
take anywhere from 1-3 mins to start
# Starting very recently, the harddisk seems to be *frantically* running
almost all the time - grind, grind, grind - even when I'm not running any
applications (the CPU usage is just 1%)
# Right clicking on a file or folder in Explorer brings up the context
menu
after 10-15 seconds instead of faster
# In Explorer, when trying to open a folder containing either a large
number
of graphic files (such as .ico files) or several large MS Office documents
(each 5-50MB), the system seems to hang/freeze for several minutes
# While starting up (after logging in) the display intermittently blinks
off
and on a couple of times (as if it lost power) before stabilizing

Here's my hardware configuration:
My machine is a Dell Latitude D610 running 1GB RAM using a Pentium M
1.86GHz
Processor. It's configured to use about 1.5GB of virtual memory and has
about
17 GB free hard disk space. The machine has no attached USB or external
drives. I have a single partition (C:) of 60GB.

I've run through all the usual things to do:
- Run msconfig and turned off all but the most vital tasks
- I always keep McAfee, Windows Defender and the Windows Firewall turned
on
and running with the latest virus definitions
- I've run through McAfee, Windows Defender, CCleaner, Adaware and none of
them showed up anything. I've run TrendMicro's, Panda's, Kaspersky's and
BitDefender's online virus scans and they didn't show up anything either
- My temporary internet files (both in IE 6.0 and Firefox) and Recycle Bin
are cleaned up, and running Disk Cleaner shows that I have very little
"crap"
- I've configured my system settings for maximum performance (Control
Panel-System-Advanced-Performance-Settings-Adjust for best performance)
- I've used Process Explorer and Dependency Checker on explorer.exe, and
it
does not load any non-Microsoft DLLs
- I've turned off the indexing system using the instructions in the
Microsoft support knowledge base
- I've configured the system to search for DLLs starting from the
Windows/system32 folder instead of the home folder (using the
SafeDllSearchMode) based on instructions in the Microsoft support
knowledge
base
- I've not configured or mapped any network drives
- I have pretty fast network connectivity both at work (T1/LAN) and at
home
(Cable) and I'm not accessing anything through a proxy
- My CPU usage during [supposedly] idle times is 1% (unless McAfee kicks
in)
even though the harddisk seems to be working ALL the time
- I've uninstalled most applications that I haven't used in 3 months
- I'm using Windows Classic Interface from Explorer-Tools-Folder
Options-General tab
- In Explorer-Tools-Folder Options-View, I've uncheck all the following:
* Automatically search for network folders or printers
* Display file size information in folder tips
* Remember each folder's view settings
* Show popup description for folder and desktop items Additionally, I've
SELECTED "Do not cache thumbnails"
- I've disabled "Allow indexing service to index this disk for fast file
searching" in the Properties window-General tab of C:\
- No files/folder are shared on my system
- I haven't touched the Prefetch registry settings or files in the
Prefetch
folder because Windows experts say that it doesn't degrade either startup
or
runtime performance

What the devil is wrong? Anyone have any ideas or suggestions? I'm ready
to
throw the damn machine and OS out the window and switch to Linux or a Mac.


.

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