What is the problem?

[Toy4x4]

For the past month or so, when I open a program/game, it takes the computer about 30 seconds to respond. Sometimes this happens when I open a second window. I keep AVG (free) updated, have run CCleaner a few times within this time period, and have defragged.
Do I need to reformat? Its never been done in the three years since the computer was built.
Thanks.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Have you upgraded anything (new video drivers, etc)?

Windows updates/IE 7?

What I just ran into....I just fixed an issue with one my kid's games. I upgraded to an ATI video driver dated from 7/2006, forgot about it, then the kids game wouldn't run...it would just stick and never run. Upgraded to the very latest ATI driver, and all is well.

 

[Toy4x4]

I did install a different video card (ATI 9800 Pro). I think I DLed the newest drivers, too. Will check.
Still have IE 6.

 

[Toy4x4]

Well, I just DLed new updated drivers from ATI that came out on 10/31/06 so I'll see how it works.

 

[Dark Jedi]

might have spy wear on the putter. have you run a cleaner like lavasoft and spybot S&D? how much ram is in the computer. how many resources are running in the background. these things can cause the lag your talking about.

 

[Toy4x4]

I run AdAware a few times a month and also have SpySweeper which runs its check every night.
1 gig of ram.
Ctrl/Alt/Del (which took about 30 seconds to appear) says 39 processes running. I guess the new drivers didn't help.

This delay started suddenly, not over a period of time so I don't think it could be the resources, but

.

 

[Sparkman]

Three years is a good run on Windows IMHO. I wouldn't spend too much time debugging this, if you don't find resolution quickly, backup, format, and reinstall.

I just upgraded my laptop RAM to 1GB, installed a faster hard drive, and reinstalled XP and all of my work-related software. The old installation of XP was doing the same kind of stuff as you describe, but not quite as bad, maybe 10 seconds wait for a click after using the machine for a few hours. This thing is blazing fast now, for a 2.2GHz P4M. I think that most of this kind of slow down is due to "pollution" of the registry. In my experience all of the registry-based versions of windows have exhibited this behavior, though some installations seem more robust than others.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

I don't believe it's spyware related. Windows Task Scheduler can cause havoc. Make sure there's nothing in "My network places" and turn off the Task Scheduler.

Sounds like it's looking for something that does not exist, waits for a specific time-out period, then continues on....

 

[Toy4x4]

My Network Places has: SharedDocs on Home
Under "Scheduled Tasks" in the Control Panel: Option to add a task and SpySweeper.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Mark Russinovich has a lengthy extremely technical page about a 30 second delay he was seeing on his system:
https://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2006/08/31/453100.aspx

Here's the bottom line of that article (snipped from WindowsITPro):
"...but the results of my investigation showed that Windows Defender is the culprit. Putting it all together, here's what I discovered happens to cause the process delays: When a program launches, the shell calls to Windows Defender's real-time protection hook, MpShHook.Dll. The hook communicates with the Windows Defender service via remote procedure calls (RPC), and as part of the protocol, RPC attempts to determine the computer account's SID. This causes RPC to look for a domain controller (DC), which it can't find. The result is a process startup delay, which is actually a network timeout.

A little more research led me to conclude that the delay happens only under the following circumstances:

* The system is running Windows XP 64-bit Edition or Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1).
* Windows Defender Beta 2 is active.
* The system is joined to a domain but hasn't connected to the domain in the current boot session.

The Windows Defender team is looking at workarounds for the next release, but now that I understand the delay I can work around it."

I wonder if Webroot spysweeper is the culprit in your situation. Have you ever installed Windows Defender?

 

[Toy4x4]

I'm running XP Pro (updated to SP2), not the 64 bit, so the Defender problem here wouldn't apply under his listed circumstances.
I had SpySweeper installed before this happened. An update to SS might have caused it, but again

.
What is Defender, btw?

 

[deepsquat]

go to your run program box...type msconfig then click the start up tab...then from there it will give you a list of all programs that are running ...uncheck the boxes for programs you don't want always running in the back ground ...like your printer... the new video card may have a progam running too...anythiung you don't recoganize ..run a google search before deleting

 

[LarryD]

Go to the Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del) and check the CPU usage. You may have a process that is running at or close to 100% which will really slow down response. If you find such a process, and if you recognize it, remove the program from your system. Otherwise, just kill the process.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Windows Defender is Microsoft's free anti-spyware tool. Personally, I don't care for it as there are other tools out there that do a better job.

Perhaps shutting down the SpySweeper service from running, then testing the application(s) in question again to see if it makes any difference.

 

[Toy4x4]

deepsquat: I checked and there is nothing out of the ordinary (ie: AV, Antispy, firewall, vid card and all the Microsoft things)
LarryD: I checked and CPU usage bounces between 0 & 4, 37 processes.
T&S: I don't use Defender, then, as I have SS. I'll give shutting it down a whirl, but I think I've shut it down before when gaming online and still had the problem.

 

[LarryD]

I recall my friend having a similar problem with delays like you are describing. He finally reinstalled WinXP using the "Repair" option and that fixed everything. The repair option should not alter any settings but should reinstall in place.

 

[Drew99GT]

Spysweeper is a resource hog like no other! When I had it on my machine, it generally made it run slow and for some reason it never shuts down on it's own when you turn the computer off; always get the force quit screen EVERY TIME.

Try shutting down Spysweeper and see if that makes things better. Version 5 of Spysweeper - people constantly complain about in tech/security message boards.

 

[blupupher]

Quote:

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...
"...but the results of my investigation showed that Windows Defender is the culprit. ...

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Windows defender was the problem of a similar slowdown on my dads computer (but not XP 64). His XP install was done about 6 months after it came out and he has never reinstalled. He also had some issues with some McAfee (blech!) stuff.
I always use spy-bots start-up thing in the advanced part. It will tell you what the program is and let you turn it off if needed.