System running very slow & CPU Usage 100%.

My System is a Dell Optiplex Desktop Microsoft Windows XP Professional Version 2002 Service Pack 3 Intel Pentium 4 2.66 GHz 2.66 GHz, 2.75 GB RAM The biggest problem that I am having is that my computer is running very slow. It takes a very long time in the initial startup and also takes a long time to execute and run programs. This problem has been going on for some time. My CPU Usage will run at 100% for a good deal of the time. I use this computer for work and usually keep my Microsoft Office Outlook open on my desktop due to the need to utilize the calendar, task, email, etc. Also I have several programs on my system to prepare income taxes. There are times when I need to open more than one year at a time and this is almost impossible anymore. I have downloaded and tried several programs. I recently purchased Glary Utilities and I have also downloaded Disk Keeper 12 Trial version to see if a constant defragmentation program would help. I also have Belarc Advisor loaded on my system. Currently I am using Microsoft Security Essentials on my system. I also have Norton Partition Magic 8.0 but I have been hesitant to do anything else. I am afraid that I may be trying too much and making the problem worse. I should also mention that I had a disk crash in 2010. I purchased a new 1 TB disk drive and installed it. I have a minor issue with the fact that it was assigned the C Drive instead of my other disk drive. The primary boot drive is G. I have to hit F12 on startup and then select “Boot to Primary Drive” to start Windows XP. I am not sure what changes I need to make to correct this problem. Norton Partition Magic will let me reassign the drive letter, however I would like your recommendation on doing this before I attempt this. This computer is very important to my work. I have an external portable drive that I have used to create a disk image of the drives on my computer. I also utilize Carbonite Online Backup to keep a current backup my data. This saved me in 2010 when the drive crashed. However I was unaware that it was not backing up my programs. I hope the disk image will help take care of that. I would greatly appreciate any help you can give me. George

Hi George. Welcome to WhatTheTech.

I would have to agree that you might be making things worse by downloading and running these programs. The answer to a slow performing computer is not to install even more software to run on there. It is usually to remove the software that is already causing you problems. Especially if that software claims to work miracles on your computer.

You have provided quite a bit of information, and I will attempt to shed a little light on some of the topics.

First of all, when you are looking at task manager, what do you find is taking up most of your CPU resources? This is usually a good indicator of where to start looking. In order to get a better idea of what is installed on your system, the condition of your computer, and what we can do to help you speed it up run a PCPitStop test for us and provide a link to your results. Here's how:

How to run PCPitStop's Overdrive tests:

• Please click here to go to the PCPitStop Overdrive sign-up page: Signup at PCPitStop (You need to use Internet Explorer with this test so that an ActiveX control can be installed.)
• Click "Create a free account"
• Enter in your relevant information on the sign-up page. You must sign-up in order to have your results recorded so that we can take a look at them here.
• After signing up you'll see the "Registration Complete" page, and you can click "Test Your System Now" to return to the test page.
• Login with your newly created e-mail address and password on the left hand side.
• Follow the directions to "Scan this system now." An activeX control will need to be installed. It is safe, and you should allow it to be installed.
• Once the tests have been run, you will see an "Almost there" page requesting further information about your computer and your experience with PCPitStop, just scroll down to the bottom and click "GO."
• A test results page will display, and I need the link to that page.
• Look in the address bar of your browser. It will look like 'http://www.pcpitstop.com/betapit/…' Please copy and paste that here to the forum.
  
  Note: PCPitStop may recommend that you use certain utilities to fix problems on your computer. At WhatTheTech, the help we provide is free. We do not endorse or recommend the use of any products PCPitStop may suggest. Instead, we prefer to help you with each issue manually without using possible pay to use programs.

Installing programs like glary utilities will only make your system slower. There is no way in the world adding a program to "constantly defrag" your hard drive is going to do anything but slow it down more. Its all a myth, and a joke. If you want to defrag your hard drive - great! But, download a nice program for doing so like Defraggler and do it only occassionally - such as once every month or every couple of months.

Unfortunately, you're really asking for trouble if you try to get in there with Partition magic and start changing drive letters. Windows should be installed on C:. Far too many poorly written programs including Microsoft's own programs, expect to find things on the C: drive and will have problems otherwise. But, that has to be done when Windows is installed. The mistake was made at the time the operating system was reloaded, and it CANNOT be changed now. You must repartition, reformat, and reinstall everything fresh to get it back to the way it is supposed to be.

Its good that you have your data being backed up, including an off-site backup. You have done your due diligence and you have reaped the benefits when your hard drive crashed. Keep up the good work. Although, I don't think you mentioned what software you were using to perform disk images? Ofcourse, you must occassionally test your backups by verifying them or recovering data from them to make sure it is working properly.

If you have to press F12 to boot your hard drive, then what you are doing is opening the "boot menu" and choosing a different boot device. This indicates that your default boot order is incorrect. Instead of pressing F12, press F2 and go in and change your boot order. Typically, you will put your CD-rom as the first boot device, and your hard drive as the second boot device. In addition, if you have more than one hard drive, you may have to change the priority of those devices. That is done in a different place. So, to recap, you will change your boot order to have the CD-rom first, and your hard drive second. Then, if necessary change the boot priority so that the correct hard drive is first, and the additional hard drive is second. When you are done, save your changes and exit. Then you shouldn't have to press F12 any more.

First, thank you very much for being willing to help. Sorry for the slow response, I came down with a somach virus and was unable to respond the last two days.
Here is the link to PC PitStop's results:

http://pcpitstop.com/betapit/sec.asp?conid=24990439

I am going to the doctor today but will be able to take actions and repond later this evening. Thanks again.

The scan actually looks pretty good. I note that your current CPU load was only 23%. Ironically, like I said, 12% of that is being used by that disk defragmenter program which obviously isn't doing anything for you because your hard drive is still 19% fragmented.

I don't see any glaring issues here and your system actually looks to be performing quite well according to this scan. This would indicate that either your computer is always running poorly and I am just missing something, or your computer is only running poorly on occassion and that was not the case during this scan.

Lets start by uninstalling these programs from add/remove programs:

• Diskeeper 12 Professional
• Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer
• Glary Utilities Pro

Next, go into control panel -> system -> System Restore. Click to turn off system restore on all drives then click Apply. You will be warned that you will be deleting all your system restore points. Allow it. It may take a while because it looks as if though you may have 140GB of system restore points on your hard drive. Once its done, uncheck the turn off system restore on all drives option. Next, click each drive listed in the bottom of the window and adjust the settings on it. Adjust the size of the system restore down to about 2-4GB for each drive.

Now, download and install Defraggler. Run the program and begin by defragmenting your C: drive.

This will help a little bit on your overall performance.

I have a couple of questions. Is this machine a business machine that is or has been part of a Windows domain, or a computer that has been managed by an IT company at some point? Also, does this system always run poorly and you experience the high CPU usage? I indicated in my initial message that looking in Task Manager could provide a clue as to what is taking all the CPU usage. You can sort by the CPU usage column and put the largest consumers on top to quickly see what is taking the most CPU resources. Please do so, and respond back when you are experiencing this problem.

First let me say thank you for your help. I am not sure about your question regarding the computer. It is used for business every day. I have attempted to set it up to be accessed by my laptop computer which I have downstairs. My office is located upstairs. I also have a server that I was used in another business. The problem with using it now is that it is running on Windows 2000 server and the accounting programs require a newer version. I have a basic understanding or networking, however my knowledge is very limited and I was not willing to spend the money it took to update the software unless I know I could set the server up properly and make everything work the way I need it to.

It seems that my system is running better. I ran the PC Pitstop program again and it does not look any better. Here is the link for the results:

http://pcpitstop.com/betapit/sec.asp?conid=24992866

Also do I need to keep all of the updates from Microsoft? I did not know if I can remove them once they have been installed.


I had a question regarding programs that help your system run better. Obviously I was ignorant regarding the use of these programs that make empty promises, however are there programs that really help. I was wondering about PC Matic. I was just curious if I need something like that since it seems that PC Pitstop was so good about letting you know about my system.

I am very concerned about Drive C on my system. The defraggler program shows that the drive health shows an error and there is a potential problem with the Reallocation Sector Count. Is there anything I can do about this?

Please tell me if I am asking for too much. I appreciate the help so much.

This PCPitStop test this time indicates trouble.

It appears likely your primary hard drive is failing. The PCPitStop test this time indicates you only received 2MB/s transfer rates on your primary (1 Terabyte) hard drive. This indicates the system has placed it into a lower performance mode to try to correct read/write errors that it is experiencing. This did not show up in the initial test.

The message you are receiving from defraggler is a SMART status on your hard drive. This is the drive's internal monitoring system telling you that it doesn't like what it sees.

Unfortunately, SMART is usually pretty accurate and if it is indicating trouble then you can be pretty sure you have trouble. Drive C appears to be a 1 Terabyte Seagate Barracuda. The most likely model of drive to fail. The failure rate of Seagate Barracudas far exceeds by multiples any other drive I have seen.

It appears that you have SeaTools installed on your computer. The best thing to do would be to download and use a bootable SeaTools for DOS disc: http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/

Boot the disc and run a long test. Instructions are here: http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/201271en

However, if you have the windows version installed you could run a long test from there but I would not trust it as much and it may take a LOT longer due to the problems in windows caused by your problematic drive. So, I greatly urge you to download and burn a bootable disc for SeaTools for DOS. The long test will be the deciding factor on the health and condition of your hard drive. Ultimately, it may be time to replace the drive. If it is already having trouble and bad sectors then additionally it would be time to reload your operating system fresh and all the programs because the bad sectors will corrupt components that will cause too many problems in the long run.

Lastly, NO I don't think you need or want PCMatic - I classify this in the same category of snake pills as any other "tune up your PC" program. Its absolutely impossible for a software program to take in the millions of combinations and possibilities of items your computer has to deal with to replace a real, intelligent, skilled human technician. As you can see, you removed the "tune up" programs and your computer runs BETTER. Go figure. Would PCMatic give you the valuable information I just gave you about your hard drive? Would it detect that your hard drive is failing? Or run the necessary tests to actually test the hard drive? Probably not. The PCPitStop test didn't even think there was anything wrong with only 2MB/s transfer rates.

EDIT: One last note. Your hard drive is now at 29% fragmentation. DO NOT attempt any further defragmentation of your hard drive. A failing hard drive will be made much worse by doing so. Lets move forward with SeaTools.

EDIT Again: I looked at your initial PC PitStop test and it also had Drive C: performance issues. Some how I missed this….

I just wanted to let you know that I am working on my system. I used the segate tools for dos and ended up crashing my the maxtor hard drive that I had on my system. Anyway, I have had my lesson from Segate. I have replaced my drives with Western Digital. I am currently reloading software. I have reloaded the operating system and some programming thus far. I think this will also help take care of alot of garbage that I had on the system that I did not need. Thank you for your advise regarding many of these so called one stop fix it programs that are suppose to help your system. I have only added defraggler and microsoft security essentials. If there are other recommendations that you have regarding other needed programs or just general pointers to consider while doing the install, please let me know. Thanks again, George

That's great news. Glad to hear you are so able to get things replaced and reinstalled. Hopefully you did check that your operating system loaded on drive C: this time before doing any more work on it?