Really slow computer and long defrag: more problems to come?

My computer has had it’s ups and downs over the past six months. The other day, I opened Open Office. In the middle of the opening, the computer locked up. When I re-booted it, it would only start in the Safe Mode.

I was afraid I would have to reload the software from the recovery discs so I was prepared to copy some files over to my other hard drive. When I opened Windows Explorer I got a message telling me the registry was corrupted and I should reboot and it would fix itself.

I did and it did. The system came back up, but began to run very slowly! From taking about a minute to about 4-5 minutes. Programs seem to take forever to load and run, but are okay once they do.

I ran scandisk, adaware, and spybot, but found nothing unusual.

Last night, my cable modem was offline so I decided to defragthe C: drive (80Gb and about half-full) and the D: drive (120Gb and about 10% full). I started the defrag about 7:30pm and it did not finish until 4:30pm today!

I plan on getting another computer in the next couple of weeks, but I would like to keep this one in good shape. I feel that if I use the recovery discs and return the computer to Day One status, everything should be okay.

Any thoughts as to why the computer started running slowly?

Sys info:
HP Pavilion 7865
AMD Athlon 1.2 Ghz
128Mb on board memory
Windows Me
I haven’t done a defrag in a while

bump

Get yourself more memory and Windows XP. I found that the Windows 9x OSs needed reinstalling every few months (but then I stressed them); the NT OSs (NT, 2000, XP) don’t. I’ve only had to reinstall when there’s been a major hardware failure or shift.

If you don’t play games and don’t do anything computationally intensive, you don’t actually need a faster computer - and now’s not the time to be buying anyway. The PC on which I’m writing this is a P3-1000. A dual P3, granted, but the second CPU doesn’t get a lot of use.

I seriously hope that when you say you are Defragmenting, you really are saying that first you are Scan Disk’ing and THEN Defragmenting each hard drive you have partitioned there.

The Defrag Software needs to look for the benchmarks that Scan Disk leaves, so that as it Defrags properly it can avoid placing files into damaged sectors.

Make sure nothing’s running, including your firewire and screensavers. Make sure all Power Save Modes are set to “Never”, so that nothing shuts down during the process.

Then Scan Disk, having it fix any problems as it goes.

Then Defragment.

Then restart !

That’s one of those questions where there are a thousand possiblities and the only good way to prune that tree is to have an expert sit down in front of the machine.

Defragging the hard drive is almost certainly a red herring and is in fact quite dangerous. When the system is unstable, running a program that, if it crashes at a bad time, can render your hard drive inaccessible is not smart. Get Windows starting, running and stopping OK first.
Extreme slowness is normally a result of something else running that shouldn’t be, or that is crashing and restarting behind the scenes continuously. The corrupted registry messages you got implies the latter is likely.

You can fire up task manager, switch to the processes tab and click the CPU header to sort the processes by CPU consumption. On a healthy system with nothing going on, “System Idle Process” should be using 97% and everything else should be 0 or 1. If you’re running defrag or something like that, it ought to be using around 20% , everything else 0 or 1% and system idle taking up the rest, about 80%.

If you see anything process using any more than about 5%, you’ve got a potential culprit. The challenge then is to determine what it is, and why it’s acting up.

You can search your harddrive for the culprit exe name to determine what program it’s associated with. i.e. if task manager says “spmb-wg.exe” is hogging CPU, search for “spmb-wg.exe”. If you find it in “C:\program files\wondersoft\masterworks super musicblaster”, then you know which program to uninstall/reinstall in an effort to fix the problem.

If the culprit program’s in C:\Windows or one of its subdirectories, then try looking at the exe’s properties. Often that’ll tell you who made it or give a clue as to which installed program it’s affiliated with. If it’s from microsoft you’re probalby gonna have to reinstall windows to clear up the problem.

More than once I’ve had these super-slow problems caused by a defective antivirus or internaet firewall program. Those programs insert themsleves into the middle of damn near everything that goes on inside the box and if they’re ill, the whole system slows to a crawl. And they often don’t look like CPU hogs while doing it.

If you can’t come up with a plausible culprit by other means, consider uninstalling and reinstalling any anti-virus and/or firewall software you have. And that includes things like ad-aware.

One final unrelated thought: Check your hard dive free space. If something went stupid (or you got attacked), you could have filled the hard drive almost completely with junk. That makes Windows very constipated. If the hard drive is nearly full, say 10% or less free space, the challenge is to find and delete the junk. I doubt that was the original cause of your troubles, but it may have been an intermediate result.

Good luck. Consider copying any important files off to CD or whatever before the thing seizes up completely or you inadvertantly kill Windows trying to save it. Badly damaged instalations are timebombs and you never know when or why they’ll go off.

I’m not computer savy at all, but facing similar issues, I eventually formated my hard drive and had a friend removing and reinstalling the various elements (like naps, memory bars, etc…) and cleaning the inside. It runs fine again now (actually much better than before I had this issue, probably because the formating wipped out many undesirable elements accumulated over close to 6 years of quite intensive use). According to my friend the problem I had probably came from a poorly installed or just too dusty RAM bar (at first he couldn’t reinstall Windows properly after formating, hence him removing/cleaning/putting back the stuff).
At first, however, before he came, he suspected that my hard disk itself could the cause of the problem I described (essentially similar to yours, once again), that it could be about to “die” and advised me to copy everything on my C:drive I wanted to keep before it would be too late.

Hi Mr. Blue Sky
After a fresh boot, what are your resources at? (Right click My Computer…and go to properties)
Go to your start button, then run, then type in msconfig . Go to the start up tab. What all do you have a check mark beside?
What anti-virus are you running? When you say that you’ve run adaware, have you also checked for updates before running it?
Have you any yellow splats in your device manager? (Right click My computer, go to properties, then the hardware tab, and then device manager)
Have you deleted all your temp files?

Just some quick thoughts. Let us know if any of it helps.

Yes, I did run Scandisk on both drives and everything came up clean.

When I ran Defrag, everything not needed was shut down and Defrag did not have to restart at any time.

Reading the post above mine, posted at the time time, I would mention that another of my computer-savy friend investigated first my computer (or more exactly directed me over the phone on how to do so), but couldn’t find a culprit, while the system was becoming more and more unstable until Windows just stopped working altogether. Hence the visit of my other friend, who found out that the issue was material, and not software-related.
I would also add that my issues (frozen computer, slow processing, extra-slow defrag, error messages, reboot needed from time to time, etc…etc…) lasted for quite a long time (several months, in fact). They were annoying, but the computer nevertheless was running more or less correctly most of the time, so it’s only when the situation became disatrous that I called for help (just to say that your issue won’t necessarily cause an imminent disaster, but obviously you probably shouldn’t wait as long as I did).

Thanks to all for the help so far.

Under properties, it says I’m running at 67%.

I’m using McAfee 7.0 - this has caused problems before similar to this and I re-installed it today, but there’s no difference in performance.

I’m using Zone Alarm Pro. This has been known to freak out especially when running with McAfee. I haven’t re-installed it yet.

Under the Device manager, everything is running okay.

I clear out my browser caches (Opera & Mozilla) every time I finish using them. I also use Window Washer to catch any stary files. I don’t use IE anymore since the last freak out.

When I pull up the Task manager, there’s nothing running that shouldn’t be. The same goes for checking the Start Up folder under msconfig. I don’t see a “Processes” tab.

Since I was using Open Office at the time the problem occured, I may try re-installing it. Can’t hurt.

In the past 17 years of PC owning, there is never a “good time” to buy a computer. I will be using the computer, eventually, to edit and burn DVDs, so the more powerful the computer, the better.

The restore disc that came with the computer do not allow me to just restore the OS. I have to either restore the original software with or without reformatting the hard drive. Since I have the secondary drive, I may have to resort to a reformat.

Some suggestions?
67% is a little on the low side for a fresh boot. I’d still be curious to know what you have loading at start up.

I’ve got nothing at all nice to say about McAfee. Would you consider AVG? It’s free, and I highly recommend it?

I too use Window washer. Love it.

It’s been mentioned already, but have you taken the side off, and given it a good blow out with canned air?

A lot of people have trouble with the Defrag that comes with MS OS.The defrag programs in 2000 and XP also are better. It has been my experience that defrag needs to be run in “Safe Mode” and that once it does the initial defragmenting subsequent defrags run smoother and quicker. There are commercial defrag programs that are reported to be much better. I think a re-install might be the way to go and if you can afford it use Win 2000 or XP. I installed 2000 on this Gateway and avoided the built in programs that the manufacturers always pile on in their OS versions. Win 2000 is great. Additional RAM would also help.

Under MSCONFIG:

ScanRegistry
TaskMonitor
SystemTray
Hidserv
EM_EXEC (mouse related)
Zone Labs Client
TrueVector
McAfeeVirusScanService

under the Task Manager:

Explorer
Zapro
Systray
Em_exec
Hidserv
Mozilla
Opera
I did clean out the case a couple of months ago when I added the second drive and more recently when I re-installed the DVD burner.

How’s this idea to try first:

since the secondary HD just has data files, how about I move all the files to the main drive and switch them and make it the primary drive when using the restore discs?

Never went the Windows ME route.

Idon’t know how they’ve laid things out in that OS, but double check your virtual memory settings.

In XP, it’s in the System control panel, under the advanced tab, click the button inthe “Performance” area. Turn off any options you don’t think you need, or choose the “better performance” radio button.

If you’ve installed later, larger software versions, this MIGHT help it and would be the easiest fix.

Also, check the Knowledge Base at Microsoft’s web site. They have notes on all the problems that they never publiceze elsewhere.

Checked the Performance tab under the Device manager.

I have two options under Virtual Memory:

Let Windows configure it (this is the default), or I can set it myself.

Under the second option I can indicate which drive to use and the minimum & maximum space settings.