New computer now slow
 

Yep, the wizz bang dual core 10 million gig everything now takes 1 minute 20 seconds to boot and another 20 secs to open Mozilla Firefox. My old P II crammed full matches that.

Jeez, I haven't even installed Office on the thing. I think I like old "boat achors," as you guys call them.

Of course, there could be something messed up with the connection (it just took me 49 seconds to open my profile page), but that shouldn't have anything to do with booting, eh?

Are you running any kind of anti-virus or anti-spyware software? You might have a bug that is slowing you down.

On the other hand, I've long thought that Microsoft put extra clock cycles in its software to slow it down so that you thought you needed a newer processor to run their OS.

Norton, the one that came with it. Good theory on MS, but I "thought" this thing was faster 2 weeks ago. I've always had problems with Pelican being slow at times. Must be that too many use the site certain times. I know that if someone is writing to a post at the moment, I can't go there. At least there seems to be a corelation. Stiil, my old standby PII will bot in 2 minutes, which is enough time for me to go make a snack and come back to sit for a session.

If I get fat, maybe I'll sue MS......

0ne real basic trick
hit control alt delete
and check CPU useage rate
to see whats useing all the extra electrons

I allso like END IT ALL to shutdown extra programs

Run a spyware check. Adaware of Spybot S&D.

No MS does not do the extra cycle thing.

I've had issues with anti-spam software really eating resources. I'm not a Norton fan, one of the reasons was their heavy footprint, don't know if that has changed.

+1 with Alf on Spybot Search and Destroy.

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

Download a free copy and run.

I'd also question your Internet connection. The amount of time to bring up a profile page seems unreasonably slow and not CPU dependent.

might be all of the extra scripts of a full boat running that slow it down?

About 30 programs, it that's what you call all that. It's using up to 3%. There was a nasty message concerning shutting down the extra stuff and at 3%, should I be concerned? I have SpyBot and Adware on the old machine. I'll get them both on this one today!

Thanks!

Talk about insider language. What is the plain and simple translation? ;)

Your PII was prob not running XP which is slow booting up. If it has slowed down, that means something is running. Def do Spybot AND Adaware (they don't find the same stuff). If you are able to understand it, run msconfig and see what programs running after you boot up (startup tab). There may be some unwanted software installed (especially if you download stuff off the net).

Your machine should boot quickly and run even more quickly. I guarantee that w/o a package to protect from spy-ware and viruses your machine was infected on day 1 and only continued to get worse since.

Ad-Aware et all are OK, but this stuff is too critical to cheap out on.

I highly recommend a subscription to Webroot's "Spy Sweeper" it is worth it;)

If you don't have A/V get that too, I agree Norton suc**

We at work don't recommend uging either of those, as they supposedly add spyware themselves too...LOL (the irony)

I recommend downloading Windows Defender.

Milt,

Download AdAware or Spy Sweeper off of the internet, its free. Update the scripts on it then run it and see how much crap has attached itself to the computer. Bet its a lot and will speed the puppy up.

Joe

MS defender is decent, but doesn't work with some antivirus products. I recently swapped laptops and instead of using Norton (which is a PIG) I switched to trend micro internet security suite (pc-cillin 2007).

Invisible, and effective. pc-cillin picked up stuff on my old laptop that norton and ad-aware missed..

rjp

Spybot found 107 entries. New boot time is 1:37. Mozilla launch is 0:34. I've made it worse. I'll live with it. In fact, I just won't shut it off. I ran an Emachines for 6 years straight and no worse for wear. Still have it, but it's real slow. Once this puppy is up and running, it's much better. Not that much better than the PII, though. Just better than the old Celeron. the PII is a high end Dell with 256K RAM, nothing be today's standards. This one has 1 gig and I'm going to double that once I get the VCR to DVD thing sorted out.

That's really all I bought this for was pics, movies and ripping MP3s. I don't even need to be on the Net and exposing the machine. It's just here and I use it, that's all.

Did you update to SP2? That slowed my boot time significantly.

Maybe you should decrease the number of programs that are running on boot up as well.

You know, I understand why guys like computers. I mean, they're machines, right? We all like machines, that's why we're at Pelican. But, some guys do this for a living and more have been at it since its inception. In our family, I'm a leader in computer useage and I'm computer stupid. I've got a 37 YO stepson that grew up in the Atari age yet does not use computers. He has to do daily reports, too. Someone transcribes them. Must be nice.

But, on most of this stuff, I have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah, there are 30 programs wanting to run on boot up, but what the hell are they?

I once found out that temporary Internet files can bog down a machine (in the old days, at least). So, using Windows Explorer, I deleted them along with my copy of Explorer which resides in that folder, Why, I don't know. Ever try to buy a copy of just Explorer? And, if you can't get on the Net, you can't download, right? Reinstalling Windows didn't help because some files were missing. New computer solved that problem.

So, you see what I mean. I'm not about to tamper with what I don't know. I'm just hjere complaining, as usual. ;)

So, what's SP2?

Milt
SP2=service pack 2 update to Win XP. You may well have auto update on, and if you click "Express Install" you may get a bunch of stuff you do not intend to have on your computer. One of those things may have been SP2.

Click "start" - "programs" - "startup" as a start (heh-heh) to find out what is immediately on at bootup.

thats about avg 30 and so is 2-3%
the nasty message concerning shutting down the extra stuff
is why I like END IT ALL as it is a free/safe download that KNOWS whats safe to turn off and does it automatily with a few clicks

scrips are autostarting programs that are inc in your 30 running on your machine now

btw have you defragged your harddrive
that moves all the scattered bits of programs
in to one place and speeds loading
thats a good idea once a month or so
do it over night as it take a few hours

There is a simple solution - if you run Windows Defender - go to add/remove programs and delete it.
My twin processor system would have a program eating 98 percent of each processor - did a google on the name of the process from Taskmaster - guess what - Windows defender.
See this link.
http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsOneCare/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=352634&SiteID=2

Please forgive me if this is redundant- but have you run 'Disk Cleanup' and de-fragmented your hard drive? Those two actions generally speed up both my desktop and laptop machines when they seem to be slowing down...

Good luck!

Paul.

Although defragging a drive can be important in overall speed of the computer, Milt just got this one. I have a hard time believing that a few months old computer (prob w/100+ gig HD) needs a defrag already.

This would be necessary for a machine that is barely out of the box? I mean, i unpacked this thing 8 weeks ago and have done no work on it. Just a few hours of browsing and....... well, you know, dozens of hours on Pelican.

Jeez, Pelican sure has changed my life. But, that's another thread, eh?

Next time, buy a Mac.
OS X defrags anything over 20Mb on the fly and no need to worry about Viruses/Spyware/Trojans etc.

/not trying to stir it up, I use Windows too. OS X is just more evolved than XP.

Milt,
both are pretty easy, and a disk cleanup is pretty quick. Might want to try them anyway- it would suck to d/l a bunch of anti-spywarre stuff then find out it just needed de-fragged.

I hope you figure it out!

Paul.

Ditch Norton, get AGV, it's free and isn't such a reource hog.

my wife's 3 gig HP has 60 resources running even with the stuff I don't want closed. Did a clean install of XP on my 1 gig and it's more like 20, and boots and runs very fast.

At 2:28 AM, it ought to be.... ;)

today, the Profile screen only took 21 seconds to open. Once open, it only took 4-5 seconds to respond to the next move.

Milt - why are you using the time to open the profile screen as a proxy for your computer performance? I just did it for grins (mine and yours), and it took more than 20 seconds - all time waiting for the host (and the associated bbs software) to run. This had little/nothing to do with how fast my computer runs.

Time to launch a program or perform an internal task is a reasonable proxy. I'd start there.

To find out how fast your internet connection is running, try one of these: http://www.dslreports.com/stest

And consider using Firefox 2.0. IE is pokey.

EDIT: Oops, I see that you already do.

Don

My semi-educated guess is that it's a combination of the bloatware shipped with the PC, and possible infections with crap.

I *never* use the OE install that comes with a box - I always wipe the disk and re-install.

Nortons makes any computer super slow.
A friend of mine also had a lot of trouble renewing her subscription as well(preloaded on a new computer). The subscription key didn't work, Nortons website didn't work, e-mails to the company didn't work, and ther were NO phone numbers available for help. Fk them!
McAfee has worked great since.

Look up "process list" on google for a list of all the processes(programs) that are supposed to be running. There was a good website called "Black Viper" that had a list of the normal/needed ones.

Stuff like MSTask, Realplayer, and all those updaters don't need to run in the background. Only Explorer (and the firewall/virus software if you're online) are needed for the computer to run.
On Win ME and earlier versions, you could configure what with START/RUN/"msconfig"

more info in sub-headings here: http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article03-106