Everything's SLOW

I have a HP Pavilion a1330n desktop running XP Media Center Edition. Things have gradually been slowing down. These would include shutting down the computer - the windows is shutting down page usually freezes and I have to push and hold the on/off button to shut it down. It also includes opening Firefox - it may take 3 - 4 minutes to open a browser. By that time I have hit the desktop icon 3 times and then 3 will open. I usually get a message about whether I want to stop a script that is running so I can continue. Opening files is slow and quite often my mouse will freeze on web pages or while looking through my files. Usually it will unfreeze after a while. Please help and let me know what logs you need. Thanks

How does it behave if you boot to Safe Mode with Networking? If better then something is starting at boot that is causing the problem.

Use msconfig to determine what is causing the problem.

These are good tutorials on using msconfig in XP or Vista:
How to use msconfig in Windows XP
How to use msconfig in Windows Vista

Click on Start then Run, type msconfig and press Enter.
Click on the Startup tab, record what is currently starting then click the Disable All button.
Reboot and see if it runs normal.
If yes then use msconfig to enable several items at a time till you find the culprit.

If no, boot to Safe Mode again, start msconfig and click on the Services tab.
Check the Hide All Microsoft Services box, record what is currently starting then click the Disable All button.
Again, do a regular boot, see if it runs normal.
If yes then use msconfig to enable services till you find the culprit.

Once you've found the culprit, uninstall it or find out how to eliminate it from your system.
Simply disabling it in msconfig is a temporary fix at best.
Enable everything else you disabled.

Another possibility is malware. If the above doesn't help then go to the Spyware / Malware / Virus Removal forum, read the info there and follow the posted directions. Once you receive a clean bill of health, come back here if you have any additional questions or concerns or it turns out not to be a malware problem.

Please be patient as that is a very busy area. If you do not receive a response in 3 days, post a message here: http://forums.whatthetech.com/What_Do_If_Y…ays_t78698.html

Thanks, I'll work on this tomorrow. 3 hours of sleep last night and I'm pulling the toothpicks out of my eyelids and hitting the sack. I'll be back to you soon.

I think I got it worked out - I believe I had a conflicting program that I deleted. Things seem to be running better now. Thanks for the suggestions. I do have a couple of other questions however. 1. My hard drive was going bad so I replaced it using a program called Acronis PC backup and recovery. During this I also added a second internal hard drive (slave). Because of the way I did it I noticed under Disk Management that my C drive is now listed as disk 1 and my H drive (the slave) is listed as disk 0. The operating system and all program files files are on the C drive as normal. Everything seems to working fine. I plan to move all my files that I created over to the H drive and leave the program files on the C drive. Is there anything wrong with this - I thought normally the C drive should be listed as Disk 0? 2. For some reason now I get a warning about KBD.exe everytime I boot up. I never got that before and the only thing I've added is that Acronis program. I've done some research and I do have a HP desktop computer but I don't have a Logitech wireless mouse. What I've read is that it's no problem - just a nuisance. Is there any way I can keep it from coming up? 3. When I shut down some times the computer gets hung up on the Windows is shutting down page and I have to push the on/off button to shut it down. Any ideas? Thanks again for your help.

You can Disable KBD.exe via MSCONFIG When you added your new Slave drive, did you switch the SATA drive cables, such that C became associated as drive 1 instead of drive 0?

I did switch the cables so they should be hooked up correctly for a master and a slave. KBD.exe is not listed in msconfig. Any other thoughts or a suggestion to item 3 listed above. Thanks.

Give Microsoft's User Profile Hive Cleanup a try, see if that helps with #3.

Item #2

You can find and disable KBD.exe with portable tool SysInternals Autoruns.
In Options menu check only Hide Microsoft and Windows Entries and Verify Code Signatures.
Press Everything tab.
Save AutoRuns file with .txt extension before and after changing (you can easy to enable all you disabled).
You can use Find option.

arTech