My work computer has been getting slower and slower. I recently defragged and downloaded and ran AdAware and Spybot SD, but since then it seems even slower than before.
System: XP Professional 2002
Any suggestions?
With SpyBot SD, did you turn on the “Tea Timer” helper app? That takes up a lot of resources, and I generally turn it off. Look in the area at the bottom right of the screen, where the clock is, for an icon that looks like a browser window with a lock on it. Right-click it then choose “Exit…” to shut it off.
Could be a number of reasons…
Have you tried removing unwanted programs?
I also check for cruft and remnants of long-gone programs in msconfig, and disable any system services that aren’t needed.
Of course, formatting is always a good option.
Backup everything you have and refresh it. Get out the Windows XP disc that came with your computer, put it in, and refresh the whole thing.
You will have to re-update things and install your programs, but it only takes a day or two of “work” to get it back up and back to normal.
I’ve done it twice in 6 years. It’s worth it.
By refresh, do you mean reformat and reinstall? Because if it’s a work computer, the OP may not have the rights to do that.
The best solution is to keep your operating system and the stuff you might actually want to keep (documents, downloads, game saves, etc.) completely separate. That way there is no backup needed. Just “refresh”, and then reinstall the applications you want to use.
Have you run XP’s Disk Cleanup tool, or another disk cleaner like CCleaner? Either will dump your unneeded temporary files that are reducing performance.
Okay, I’ll try the disk cleanup tool.
When Spybot and AdAware appear, I exit out of them. But perhaps the slow startup is caused by them in the first place? How do I set them so that they don’t come on at startup?
I want to try everything I can short of refreshing. I don’t really have anything on there that’s worth backing up (except perhaps my Web browser bookmarks) because all my important stuff is on a server. However, I can’t reinstall the system software without calling in I.T. and I want to avoid doing that as long as possible. Currently, I have a long wait at startup and a long wait to get applications started, but once those are done, I can still work. If I have to call in I.T., I’ll lose a whole day of work.
I second this. Pull off the files you need and do a complete wipe/reinstall. Did this to my aging desktop and it solved the problem. I hired a computer geek to do it and plan on doing it to my laptop.
Click Start -> Run
type msconfig
Click OK
On the Startup tab uncheck everything you don’t really need to start every time you boot. Most of them will still start when you want them to, but if you find one that doesn’t, just go back to that Startup tab and check it.
On the first boot you will get a very confusingly worded pop-up box. Just check “Don’t show this again.”
Before you mess around with msconfig, try Autoruns which is distributed by Microsoft. It will show you everything that is starts automatically on boot and allows you to safely disable the autostart of selected unwanted components.
One odd problem I found was that Outlook was killing my entire system.
Every one of my emails contains either a picture or a document. And Outlook perversely shoves them all into one vast file. I tried all sorts of “archiving” and “condensing” to no avail.
To see if it affects your other programs, turn off the “continually watch for new mail” feature and reboot. For me that was an eyeopener. Of course now I still have to wait two minutes when I load Outlook to look for new mail. Haven’t the energy to find a better solution. Maybe next month.
This was my problem exactly. Do what Turble said and you should be fine.
Well, something seems to have worked. I ran the disk cleanup routines and then turned a bunch of stuff off in the msconfig window and the latest restart seems to be snappy. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this keeps up.
Too many start-ups will slow down your puter when starting up; however, you don’t want to not have spyware and AV not start up because they give you real time protection. They cannot do this if they do not run with the start up, unless you then manually enable them. When you use them to scan, then your puter will run much slower, and never use more than one scan at a time.