computer running VERY slow

[Dbl_D718]

My brother is home for break and he brought his laptop home. Well I wanted to use it for something and it is running painfully slow, something has got to be wrong. At school, he has to use McAfee and only McAfee as his antivirus to use the school network, just in case that info is usefull. I installed Hijack This to scan and get a log to post here and hopefully get some help.

I'm not entirely sure if this is a virus problem or not, but this seemed like the most appropriate forum to post in. Thanks in advance.

 

[johnb35]

First off, give me the specs of this laptop, how much memory is installed and what processor is in it. I'm guessing you don't have enough ram and with everything running at bootup is really slowing you down, Mcafee would be the big thing slowing you down.

You have a lot of items that is running at bootup that can be disabled. Please use the msconfig utility to stop these programs from running at bootup. Click on start, click on run, type "msconfig" without the quotes and click on ok. When the utility loads up click on the startup tab and then uncheck the items that correspond with these entries. After unchecking items, click on apply, then ok and reboot your computer.

O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [QuickTime Task] "C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QTTask.exe" -atboottime
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [iTunesHelper] "C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunesHelper.exe"
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [Adobe Reader Speed Launcher] "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\Reader_sl.exe"
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [Adobe ARM] "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\ARM\1.0\AdobeARM.exe"
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [SunJavaUpdateSched] "C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\jusched.exe"
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [updateMgr] C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Reader\AdobeUpdateManager.exe AcRdB7_1_0
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [WeatherDPA] "C:\Program Files\Zango\bin\10.3.75.0\Weather.exe" -auto
O4 - HKCU\..\RunOnce: [Shockwave Updater] C:\WINDOWS\system32\Adobe\SHOCKW~1\SWHELP~1.EXE -Update -1100465 -"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; yie8)" -"http://www.shockwave.com/gamelanding/driftnburn3.jsp"

Also I recommend downloading and running malwarebytes and posting a logfile from it. Follow the steps here....

http://www.computerforum.com/131398-important-please-read-before-posting.html

Run malwarebytes first, and then hijackthis again and post both logs back here.

 

[Dbl_D718]

It's a Toshiba latop with 1GB of ram and a Core 2 Duo T7200 (2GHz) processor. I've got an updated HJT log, but my bro doesn't want to download Malwarebytes, so I can't get a log from it. Thanks.

 

[Cold Canuck]

How much free drive space is there?

With just 1GB of RAM and a bunch of apps running, your page file must be getting huge, fast,

 

[gamblingman]

Slooooooooooooooooow

What did you mean by it not wanting to download?

I agree with johnb35, those processes are not necessarily. Just look though the msconfig on "startup" and "services" tabs, and look for things that are obviously not needed. Like johnb showed, programs like itunes services, java updaters, and the such are just bloating his startup & run-time.

They set their stuff to run ALL THE TIME. Its very annoying.


I had to clean up my dads computer last summer, it was painfully slow!

Here is what I'd recommend ( in this order also ):

*Go into Add/Remove Programs and remove programs he doesn't need/want anymore,

*Update everything you can, make sure he only has the most recent version of Java (look for older versions in "add or remove programs" and remove them). You can go to the Microsoft.com and check for the updates manually to get all the windows updates he may have missed.

*Install Firefox if he doesn't already have it ( you can import his bookmarks from I.E. ), and tell him to start using it.

*Go through msconfig and stop the non-necessary items ( in the "startup" and also the "services" tabs ),

*Download CCleaner, then run both "cleaner" and "registry" cleaners.

*Check the HDD and see if it needs to be defragmented ( I would run it regardless of whether is says it needs it or not )

*Do a check-disk scan,

*After all that clean his computer of dust and dirt ( if your not comfortable taking it apart, or doing so will void the warranty, then take it somewhere to have it cleaned. )

It may take all day to do all those things, so find a good movie to watch while you wait!

and you're DONE!


Did that help?