slow desktop

[mikekelly]

hi there,

does anyone know why my computer takes four or five mins on to start up after i have logged on. when i boot my pc up it dosent freeze but its not far from freezing up, there isnt any programs in start up besides my firewall which starts up and thats about it. say i wanted to go on the internet i would have to wait five minutes for for my pc to load it after i double click the the internet explorer icon. when i first got the computer it seemed to be running great, but now it's really slow.

does anyone know what the problem is and how it can be solved ? i have a feeling that it may have too many junk files in it that need cleaned through.
just in case your wondering heres some of spec;

2.39 ghz
256 mb ram
there is over 44 gb of hard drive left too

i know thats not a great deal but its basically a computer my sister uses for surfing and downloading and burning cd's

 

[aqsg72]

You don't have a great deal of RAM but the problem will be caused by a lot of hidden apps/spyware/adware running at startup. A format and reinstall would clean the system up completely and allow you to start a fresh, but you would probably like to post a log report from HijackThis which people can then look through and tell you which processes to disable.

 

[Lax]

Is it a Dell?

 

[SlothX311]

I don't think it's a matter of RAM. I have a P4 1.6 Ghz with 128 MB of RAM and it boots faster than my pc, which is a 3 Ghz P4 with 2 GB of RAM. I did have this same problem, however with an AMD system that I recently sold. I would get to the welcome screen and everything was still fine, and then when I typed in my password and hit enter it logged on fine. Then once the desktop, icons, and taskbar, etc, loaded the system would have an hour-glass for about 2 minutes or so. It turned out that it was an IRQ conflict that was in the process of being fixed, durring this "hanging" period. Windows would correct the IRQ problem and then Windows would run fine. It was durring then next bootup that it would happen again. Turns out that it was a conflict in an install that, somehow finished, but created an IRQ conflict. The only major problem is that there was no way for me to know which software, drivers, were causing the conflict. There are 16 IRQ's and unless you know which ones do what, it doesn't make much sense. Even if you do know what they are, example LPT 1 and LPT 2 are used for printing, they are a pain in the rear to configure. I had a conflict in USB devices, even though Windows XP supports 127 USB devices daisy-chained together on one USB bus. I had USB mouse, and keyboard on one port with a Y-splitter, and that wasn't the problem, but the second USB bus had 3 devices running through each other, and this made Windows freak out. I had to reinstall everything, excluding Windows. My advice to you is to just completly re-format and re-install everything.

 

[Fure6]

Is it a Dell?

Why would you ask that? you kind of offend me by asking that... i like dells...

you probably have spyware, and i bet that someone has already told you that.

I'm sure that someone has already told you that you can go to Start->run->type in "msconfig" and press enter->go to the "startup" tab->if you have Windows XP you can check "hide all microsoft..." and it will hid all microsoft products that you shouldn't care about. then uncheck almost all the boxes that are there exept the printer stuff or anything like that, that you use often.

and i know that someone has just told you about your RAM. go to this website: http://www.crucial.com/store/listmfgr.asp?cat=RAM and put in all your computer information (i attached a message of where you would start).

Maybe someone has told you to "defrag" your hard drive also. to do that you: double click my computer->right click on your hard drive-> go to the "tools" tab->defrag and this will make your computer faster if you have never defraged ever.

 

[Lax]

Reason I ask if it's a dell is because we see a lot of dells com in with this problem, usually ones with XP home and 256Mb of ram. For some reason most dells (after they get older) start to slow down on the boot, even without spyware or adware.

 

[SFR]

Reason I ask if it's a dell is because we see a lot of dells com in with this problem, usually ones with XP home and 256Mb of ram. For some reason most dells (after they get older) start to slow down on the boot, even without spyware or adware.

LOL

right... all of a sudden Dell is the root of all evil... Dell is the cause of ALL of these problems...


Last I heard Dell made every single piece of hardware in their machines along with writing every piece of software including the drivers... AND I JUST FOUND OUT THAT DELL has their OWN VERSION of MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP HOME!

.....

 

[Praetor]

LOL my good. All OEMs and while we're at it, ALL computers have their problems. Just because Dell is common and big doesnt neccesarily mean they are the root of evil people.

Last I heard Dell made every single piece of hardware in their machines along with writing every piece of software including the drivers...

You heard semi-right. They make custom bioses and use a modified ATX power connection. Everything else is standard.

AND I JUST FOUND OUT THAT DELL has their OWN VERSION of MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP HOME!

Yeah well every OEM has its own version of whatever OS it decided to install

 

[mikekelly]

thanks for the input i ran some software (ace utililties, spy sweeper, ad-aware ) and its seems to have done the trick. boy was there some pile of spyware & adware over 2000 files most of them cookies though. i have since unistalled kazaa and all the garbage that came with it.

i also did a scan disk with diskeeper and have setup the "set it and forget it" option and things are looking much better.

just in case anyone is reading this who is a novice like me, when running the the spy sweeper type apps restart in safe mode and and scan and you will pull up alot more files(something else i have learned on this board :] ). also if you can get hold of the ace utilities software it is a really good maintainence app, much better than the standard windows stuff which is preloaded and it helps you monitor your start-up programs which i think was half the problem i had on top of the spyware.

thanks again too

aqsg72
lord anthrax
slothx311
fure6
fsr
praetor

 

[Praetor]

Glad you got that worked out ... Kazaa is a breeding ground for spyware and the like

 

[SFR]

LOL my good. All OEMs and while we're at it, ALL computers have their problems. Just because Dell is common and big doesnt neccesarily mean they are the root of evil people.


You heard semi-right. They make custom bioses and use a modified ATX power connection. Everything else is standard.



Yeah well every OEM has its own version of whatever OS it decided to install

yeah yeah yeah... I was trying to be sarcastic.. I know each OEM customizes the bios but they dont create it from scratch.. and the same thing with the OS...

It seems that sometimes the easiest answer is to blame the OEM... but not always the right answer.

 

[Praetor]

I know each OEM customizes the bios but they dont create it from scratch..

Yeah they do. (well some do, like Dell)

 

[SFR]

cool... learned something new!