Slow Running PC

[Allan Carr]

I'm trying to sort out my 10 year old grandson's PC (XP Home) which is running very slowly. When I try to defrag the disc, it refuses even to analyse the disk to show the fragmentation. Chkdsk runs OK and reports no faults. Any ideas?

[John_C]

Originally Posted by Allan Carr

I'm trying to sort out my 10 year old grandson's PC (XP Home) which is running very slowly. When I try to defrag the disc, it refuses even to analyse the disk to show the fragmentation. Chkdsk runs OK and reports no faults. Any ideas?

How long is it since it was defraged? ....does he use the internet?, if so does he have Anti Virus & Fire Wall installed? How long has the OS been installed? (so many Q's I know)


If he's using it on the net without protection it could be that its infected with virus's and being used as a spam server! ..

If the OS has been installed for some time with lots of programes being installed and removed then all of which could really slow it down. A good programe for tidying up your PC is Tune-up http://www.tune-up.com/

[Allan Carr]

I don't know when it was defragged. The system is about 18 months old. It is used to access the internet but has both firewall & anti-virus. I've tried running a couple of tune-up programs and a Registry tidier but they haven't made any difference.

I know that his dad has been copying some of his CD's to his MP3 player so I don't know if he has infected it with this Sony anti-piracy S/W which has caused some problems but I didn't think it caused slow running.

[Sean]

Don't bother faffing with it just backup what he wants to keep and rebuild formating the drive, then setup two partitions C:\ for the operating system and D:\ for all his bits

Sean

[John_C]

Originally Posted by Allan Carr

I don't know when it was defragged. The system is about 18 months old. It is used to access the internet but has both firewall & anti-virus. I've tried running a couple of tune-up programs and a Registry tidier but they haven't made any difference.

I know that his dad has been copying some of his CD's to his MP3 player so I don't know if he has infected it with this Sony anti-piracy S/W which has caused some problems but I didn't think it caused slow running.

If its that new it should have a separate recovery disc or some CAB files on the PC. I would just back up any data you want to keep and format the Hard Disk and reinstall the original OS.

[scubadooba]

What anti virus is it running? If it's Norton that will slow the computer down. Try uninstalling Norton and using a different anti virus.

[nigelH]

Originally Posted by scubadooba

What anti virus is it running? If it's Norton that will slow the computer down. Try uninstalling Norton and using a different anti virus.

The difference between Norton Anti-virus and a sustained Denial-Of-Service attack is actually hard to distinguish.

More memory usually solves speed problems. With MS bloatware 18 months is a lot of megabytes of extra fluff. I assume you downloaded the 'updates'.

[scubadooba]

Personally I wouldn't use Norton, uses to many resources. I use Nod32 which I find a better anti virus package.

[adamr]

fdisk/mbr is the way forward as already suggested...

You could always buy a mac of course... goodbye viruses goodbye bill gates... goodbye blue screens...

[johntemp]

Originally Posted by scubadooba

What anti virus is it running? If it's Norton that will slow the computer down. Try uninstalling Norton and using a different anti virus.

Uninstalling Norton is a major job, it leaves all sorts of crap around.

Is it I/O bound or CPU bound?
i.e. is it struggling to run anything and the hard disc is thrashing or there is a process running and the cpu is being utilised heavily?

Also look at the event logs and see if there is anything unusual - failed processes, disk problems etc.