If my past computer threads haven’t made you aware, I’m a total retard when it comes to computer problems.:rolleyes: My cop-out is that at work we have computer people that fix everything right away and therefore I’ve got no motivation to learn to do it myself. Hey, who am I to put someone out of a job!
Except all my problems happen to my home computer. Work I.T. guys won’t come here:mad:
Ever since I upgraded my Webroot spysweeper to Spysweeper 5 everything has been running slow & “herky-jerky”. Sites clicked on open slower, pictures load slow.
I have Road Runner and am used to lightning fast speed.
When I shut the spyware program down everything goes back to normal. So I’m sure it’s that program that’s causing the problem. I’m thinking it’s conflicting with something else. I do not have any other spyware program. Anyhelp is appreciated.
Oops. When I said “current spyware”, this was an indication of my stupidity. On reflection, I see you’ve got antispyware software causing problems, not antivirus. IMO spyware, while a problem, does not require a constant guardian - personally I do a manual weekly sweep and have no bother. If this is correct, I’d say download Ad-Aware, and uninstall the problem program.
I had many spyware problems with my old computer using Ad-aware. Passive programs are not as effective as active ones. I’ve been using Spy Sweeper for over a year and a 1/2 with ZERO spyware problems. It’s since upgrading from version 4 to 5 of spysweeper that I’ve had the “herky jerks” and slow down issues. I’m thinking it’s a conflict somewhere.
I’d go back to version 4 before I’d dump the entire thing in favor of an inferior program.
I assume your OS is XP. It just may be the problem is that your new version is conflicting with the Microsoft anti-spyware program built in. You can turn that off to see if it makes any difference.
The software site is likely to have answers for the problem, and I would read the FAQs section. If you don’t find the answer in the support area, then drop the support department an e-mail now to get the ball rolling.
I’m with jjimm - spyware shouldn’t really require too much active protection. Rather, pay attention to the basic precautions that will really keep you covered - keep Windows patched and up-to-date, don’t run with administrative privileges except when you need to, and use Firefox instead of IE whenever possible.
Those three things are the only spyware protection I have on my computer, and I’ve never seen even a breath of it. These measures won’t cost you in terms of system speed, either.
Did you just install it recently? If it asked if you wanted to do a disk scan after installation and you said yes has it been running long enough to have completed (possibly several hours)? If you also scheduled a routine scan you should do it when you’re not using the machine.
It may also have put you over the top for your physical RAM in use and so is causing memory paging. Open the task manager and go to the performance tab - what are the numbers for total physical memory and total commit charge?
For the net saavy yes I would agree with the above. 95% of spyware and virus problems are related to browsing habits. I have had customers try to tell me that leaving a computer on that is connected to the internet doing nothing is just begging to come back to 3000 viruses and that I must be some kind of idiot to not be selling/reccomending the latest version of Norton or Macafee to my customers.
Amazingly enough when they let me strip out their AV/AS apps and replace them with AVG/Windows Defender all of their problems go away.
The big problem with the recognized brands is they assume the user is a complete moron and needs to be locked out of everything that might possibly once in a billion years be used to install a virus, or any useful program, or network device. God forbid a person might want to share a printer for a few minutes.
I was running Spy Sweeper 4 (which was loaded via disc when I bought the computer at Best Buy 16 months ago). No problems, no spyware. A week ago while doing the auto definition updates it told me there was a version 5 I could update to for free, included in my subscription. I did. 'Puter has been running slow & jerky ever since. I have have been using Firefox since I bought this thing. It’s only used for web surfing, nothing else, no business/school/etc…
Performance tab on task manager says this:
Commit charge
Total 329436
Limit 689940
Peak 608516
Physical memory
Total 252656
Available 42136
system Cache 54900
This is with the program on. What does any of this mean?
Compare those two total figures: the first is much greater than the second. Also note the peak usage. This means that your machine has been paging heavily. Paging is where the PC uses the HDD as extra memory. The HDD is very much slower than main memory. So buy yourself some more memory - 1 GB is cheap these days.
Under certain circumstances, it is quite possible for a Windows computer to become infected with trojans within a few moments of being connected to the internet, without the user doing anything to attract them. All it requires is a Windows machine that is behind on patches and updates, and an internet connection that is inadequately firewalled.
As Quartz said, your computer is trying to run 330 MB worth of programs and you have only 256 MB of RAM. This is without a doubt the cause of your problem. If you upgraded to 512 MB it would run well again, at least until you tried to open anything else. I second the recommendation of 1 GB.
Very few work IT guys are opposed to “off hours, non-employer side work.” I’m certainly not opposed to it, and have done plenty of “personal jobs” for co-workers & their friends, though I’ve gotten a bit too expensive for most as of late.
Unless you’re far away from their homes or the job site, I’d be surprised if you couldn’t set up a small deal with one of them. Find the junior guy that needs a few bucks.
Other than that, I’d say to ditch the spyware program you’re using. Or check for an update to the upgrade you just got… or check forums out there to see if others are having the same problem.
