what's insanely slowing down my father-in-law's computer? (not spyware, not etc.)

In My Humble Opinion
1

Ok, here goes.

We’re staying at my father-in-law’s, and his computer is running at probably 1/20 of the speed that it should be. We’re talking 1+ minute to launch a simple web browser or app, freezing cursors and toolbars, programs not responding for 30+ seconds at a time to simple commands like “minimize” or “save as”, even typed text sluggisly appearing on screen.

I’ve run Ad Aware and Spybot (clean), virus scanners (clean), Disk cleanup and defrag, killed the junk that was running in the systray, and all the usual tricks. No dice.

So, what the hell could be going on? Thoughts?

Some extra clues and pertinent info:

  1. Upon startup/restarting, the entire system essentially freezes w/ the HD loudly, constantly crunching for about 10 minutes, no exagerration. What the hell could be going on there?

  2. The task manager’s CPU usage basically hovers around 100%, spiked - yet I’ve killed off the majority of the inessential background processes and programs.

Any ideas?

2

What is the system’s processor speed and how much ram is installed? What version of Windows is he using?

3

RAM going bad?

More speicifically, since you report “HD crunching noises” it makes me think that Windows (I presume that is the OS in question) is having to use its paging file too much (which will slow the system down to a crawl), which means the RAM may be suspect or simply insufficent for the task. How much RAM does the system have? Does this number match what was installed? Does the system run better with a stick (or more, if feasable) of RAM removed? Does it run better with more RAM (or different sticks of RAM swapped in)?

That would also help explain the CPU usage… if the system is running low on memory, it’s constantly having to maintain that paging file. Does it also look like the HD is getting used a lot?

That’s what I think of off the top of my head, hopefully it’ll spark further ideas as to what else may be wrong.

(On preview: like **Czarcasm[/n] mentioned, more details on the system will be helpful.)

<< I keep hitting the escape key, but I’m still here. >>

4

Sorry about that; It’s a 2ghz P4 running WinXP. I just found and removed some nasty malware that may have been the culprit (WinTools), and fixed the page file/virtual memory to a smaller portion of HD space (it was crazily set at 1028 megs or so). But i’m not that worried about the page file being the culprit - the HD only chatters crazily for the first 10 mins (perhaps that malware, etc. running like mad), then goes silent.

5

I’m about to install and run Sandra to check out some of the phsyical things - ram, etc.

6

Oh, and 512 mb of RAM, which should be sufficient for XP.

7

You really need to save critical data, format and re-install to detemine if you have an incipient drive hardware problem or a software problem. It will take less time than trying to peel apart the apps and resident processes layer by layer to find the culprit, especailly if some malware crap has munged the registry up.

8

I wouldn’t call 1028 megs of virtual memory crazy. If you had lowered it to 256 or below, say, that would be crazy. Best to let Windows manage it on its own in most circumstances.

And astro gives wise advice.

9

Which processes are being CPU hogs? Click the “Processes” tab in task manager, and make sure the “Show processes from all users” box is checked. This will tell you how much RAM and CPU each process uses.

10

Problem solved! It turned out that his daughter had a massive MMORPG that was auto-running and constantly running on her win profile even when XP was switched to another user. I slaughtered it.