My Computer Use To Be Fast

I've done spyware scans with add aware and my zone alarm has one. Virus scans with symantec. disk clean and defrag. What is wrong with my computer? can it be fixed?

Very likely have too many items loading from the StartUp Folder.

Let's have a better look at your machine.
Go to http://www.pcpitstop.com
Run the Full Tests
Full Tests is a clickable item in the left hand column.
You will have to register with any valid email address and create a Password
You will have to accept an ActiveX to enable the Tests to Run on your machine.
Both are SAFE and free.

When you get your Results (test run is less than 3 minutes) you will have an option for TechExpress on any Results page.
Please post your TechExpress Link back here into this thread so we can help you in a more informed manner.

Best Regards

Here is the link for the test results

http://www.pcpitstop.com/techexpress.asp?id=CEJXHWYVETVSKTKW

Is this correct?

Hi Amebeo, Couple of Questions: 959mb installed RAM is an "odd" number And the Pit test is detecting it as one stick. 950mb is 65mb less than one gig (1024mb) Even if you are running onboard video adapter which you appear to be, 65mb is not a common number to be called for. Maybe 32 or 64 or 128 or 256, but 65mb is a new one for me. Can you explain any of the above. I apologize for not being familiar with such a layout if it is in fact "standard" for your Hewlett-Packard Desktop. ______ CPU clock speed appears to be "throttled-back" Nominal Clock Speed 2167 MHz Measured Clock Speed 994 MHz do you have a feature in your BIOS/CMOS to allow for lower function? ———- As I earlier speculated, you have a ton and a half of applications and processes running from Startup. Usually when people have excess programs and processes running at start up I mention that they have a ton of extras. You have a ton and a half. It's your machine and you get to run it any way you prefer. But if you are concerned about brisk response, strong ability for multi-tasking, and fast operation, you will want to consider disabling many/most of those startups that are listed in Purple and Gray background, and actually a few of the ones listed in Green background as well. You can use the Pit Test links to explore what each item is and does, as you consider whether or not you chose to let it stay active in your Start Menu. Bottom line is that you can disable all items in your MSCONFIG - Startup(tab) except your antivirus and firewall. You might want to experiment with doing just that - disable - all. And see if your machine responds more the way you had wanted it to perform. you can always re-enable any items that you prefer to have active, and/or run any of them manually at whatever time you may want them. The two Pit Test - Tune-up Tips, will help "a little bit". You seem to have a fine machine, that is a bit overloaded. Reconfiguring your StartUps is likely to help "a lot". Keep us posted with your progress and feel free to ask questions as you go along. Best Regards Edit: Your JAVA Runtime Environment is nicely updated, but you also still have (4) four older JRE's that contain vulnerabilities and should be Uninstalled. Do you have more than one installation of Norton? (Norton AntiVirus and a separate Norton Security Center) Several of the "gamie" applications that Hewlet-Packard often includes on their machines can compromise overall performance. Some of the ones that you have are of the WildTangent Family that includes a low-risk annoying spyware component. Some downloaded screen savers can also be resource hogs. Unless you use Adobe Reader for highly specific purposes, you would do better uninstalling it and installing the lower-impact Foxit to read .pdf files as necessary. I run Foxit on almost all the machines that I manage. You also do not need the SBC Yahoo bloatware features that get installed with their DSL installation CD. Did you know that you don't have to use that CD in order to connect to the SBC DSL service you subscribe to?

Doug thanks for the quick response, As far as my RAM goes It is supose to be a gig. I know that is a wierd number because the binary code used by the computer should require the amount of RAM to be divisble by 8. I have not made any hardware changes since I bout this computer. I don't know how it got to be that way or if that is just the way it has always been. _________ Clock speed? I have no idea if you think I should change somthing, I will gladly do so but I'm not familiar with changing clock speed. _________ I agree there are too many items running from start up. I'll have to check with the boss (wife) to see what ones I can disable I just needed someone who knows what they are talking about to convince her. (thanks) I'm not sure what you mean when you say "startups that are listed in Purple and Gray background," I'll see if I can figure that out on my one but let me know where to look in case I can't. _________ I already changed the internet options and the system restore optionsit mentioned a I think it was called windows task pro? Should I be using that? _________ As far as I know I only have one antivirus program it's called Symantec Antivirus. I don't think I've have nortons security center on this computer. _________ The four older JRE's you mentioned where do I find these to get rid of them ADD/REMOVE ? _________ We do have a screen saver but it is a slide show of all of the pictures my wife took and put on the computer. I don't think we have any downloaded screensavers. ________ My wife has had a lot of trouble with .pdf files lately. She keeps getting error messages saying wile doing things she has been able to do before. She uses adobe a lot, but I'll she if she will make the change. ________ And finaly, yes I do know that I can access my sbc dsl account without the disk. I think we just assume that we get some sort of benefit from it. Got me just common ignorence I guess Thnx Amebeo

Ooops. Sorry Amebeo, I didn't get a response posted to you yet. I just printed out your questions and will now reply one at a time. Give me maybe 15 minutes. Best Regards

It's ok no worries. I have one more question though. On the tune up requests my ie cache refuses to change. I followed the instructions and scanned again. According to pcpitstop my changes did not take affect. I've tried I think 3 or 4 times now with no progress do you have any ideas why?

Hi Amebeo,

Too many items running from StartUp:
When you look at your PCPitstop Full 'Tests you will notice that the Results are parsed into major sections:
CPU
Memory
Hard Drive
Video
Internet
Windows
Security

Click on the Windows item to view the processes and applications that are Running currently
You will notice that at the top of the list, the items have a Purple Background. <– these items are well known to be non-essential
____
The next group of items has a Gray background. <–These items are particular to your machine, or are items not well enough known by the Pit Test for a recommendations to be made. Often times they "are" optional. You can click on each item to go to various Internet Wedsite locations where you can learn more about the item and decide for yourself.
______
The next group of items has a Green background. <— these items are well known to be basic parts of the Windows Operating System and other closely integrated processes and applications that make your machine produce what you want in the Windows Environment. Still, even "some" of those Green Background items can and in some cases "should" be disabled from running all the time.
Examples of "Green" items that can/should be disabled, include:
ctfmon.exe <– Language and special text handling that is used in some cases for people with handicap access needs and in some cases where people are often communicating to others in "not their native language" and therefore requiring Windows to do a share of the language translation. <– doesn't apply very often, so can usually be disabled

HP Keyboard Hewlett-Packard Company C:\HP\KBD\KBD.EXE This item actuates various "special features" of the keyboard, such as buttons to increase/decrease volume of MediaPlayer, jump to the Internet, compose an email, magnify onscreen text, open a shopping cart at a retail website, Print the page that is being displayed, or create a "conference call" sometimes called a 360-session or 3rd party call. <– While these features are "nifty" they are not often used by the average owner/user and therefore don't need to be consuming machine resources. <– and anyway, the same features can be commanded directly from the IE or Office Window Command Line.

MCE "Away Mode" Microsoft C:\WINDOWS\ARPWRMSG.EXE
Learn about "MCE Away Mode" here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/902437

indexing service<– not listed in your Green zone, but more than likely is an activated feature on each of your Hard Drive partition <– Right click on C:\ then Properties - General(tab) and remove the checkmark in front of "Allow Indexing Services to index this disk for fast file searching" Take it from me, this feature doesn't help unless you have in the range of 100,000 saved documents that you "frequently" research to find specific subparts. (Search will still allow you to find references and subparts of documents even without "indexing service")

The "bottom-line" is that "everything except you AV and Firewall" can be safely "disabled" via MSCONFIG.
the Caveate is that "the Boss" may prefer to continue having a few of these "bells and whistles" running.
________________________-

Yes, you can Uninstall JRE via Control Panel - Add/Remove.
I'd recommend that you uninstall "all" of them and then install the latest version available.
_______

RE: Adobe Reader

Unless you are "creating" .pdf files for publication, the chances are that you only need to "read" .pdf files.
Foxit does a spendid job of displaying .pdf files to be read, and does it quicker and with less impact on the machine.
___________

RE: SBC Bloatware

You can get rid of a bunch of it just by Uninstalling all-items-Yahoo (browser, toolbar, IM, security, autoupdater, and the like)

As to your apparent "dual clock speed CPU"
some machines have a "power saver" setting which cuts the CPU speed in order to save battery life (for laptops)
You may be able to "increase" your CPU speed to its intended Maximum, by selecting a Power Management Scheme such as "Always On" or "Minimal power Management". (accessed via right-click on desktop - Display Properties - ScreenSaver - Power Management - Schemes
____

You can make a "big Difference" by selecting "best Performance" instead of Windows Managed or Best Appearance
Right-Click on My Computer - Properties - Performance - Select "Adjust for Best Performance"
You may observe a slight decrease in the "eye-candy" effects on your display, but most people don't even notice the difference and definitely enjoy the increased system resources/speed they recover.

Keep us posted with your progress.
I anticipate that you will find your machine performing more briskly if you make some of the above recommended changes.

On the tune up requests my ie cache refuses to change. I followed the instructions and scanned again. According to pcpitstop my changes did not take affect. I've tried I think 3 or 4 times now with no progress do you have any ideas why?

Try closing all browser windows.

Then goto:
Start - Control Panel - Internet Options - Temporary Internet Files - Settings
Change the number to "100"

Next:
go to the Security Tab - Internet Zone -
Change the Settings from Default - to Custom - OK - then back to Default - OK
____

You will notice that the "Apply" button will have become "highlighted" during that back-and-forth procedure above.

Click on Apply - then - OK

Hopefully that will allow the Cache Size to be Set.

If the above doesn't help, you may have a bunch of files that are not being deleted from Temporary Internet Files, or you have a bunch of Offline Files.

Use the same Internet Options Panel to Delete Files (including Offline) and Delete Cookies.
Then try changing the setting for Cache Size again.

Browser cache still at 1194 meg any other ideas?

Above the Settings section you will see an item: "Check for newer versions of stored pages" "Automatically" <– should be selected with a checkmark/dot in front of it.

In Internet Options press the buttons for Delete Files and Delete Cookies Then Select to "View" files and "View" cookies. Are there any items in there that refused to be Deleted?

I did check to make sure and all files were gone I then followed the previous instructions and scanned again with the same result "Automatically" is marked

hmmm. Let's try a couple of different things.

Download CleanUp! 4.52 by Steven Gould
This is a handy temp file cleaner that once you have it, you'll wonder why you did your clean-up manually ever before.
http://www.stevengould.org

Download and install CleanUP! 4.52

Run CleanUp! 4.52
(it's freeware, but it will ask you to make a donation. – You can select "No" and still receive the same good utility.)
I use it on several machines and have never made a donation, (though I have consulted with Steven Gould and tend to support his excellent work, so maybe that kinda counts as a donation.)

CleanUP! 4.52 will also alert you, the first time you've run it, asking if you want to just do a "trial run".
Don't worry about that, just go ahead and run the program.

It probably won't identify anything at all, since you've repeated the manual delete a few times already.

when CleanUP! 4.52 has finished its scan it will ask you to restart your machine, so that the few "difficult" items it may have detected can be removed in the pre-windows environment during re-boot.

Next: Go back to Internet Options and see if you can reset the size of the browser Cache.
Reboot after changing the size. Rebooting is not mandatory for IE Versions 4, 5, 6, and 7, but it used to be, and maybe it could help in your situation.
___________

I presume you've already Uninstalled your old versions of JAVE JRE ?
If not, then please do so, and install the most recent version (6)
Then goto:
Control Panel - JAVA - Double-Click to open the JAVA Control Panel.
Select to Delete all Temporary Internet Files.
Click OK and Exit JAVA Console

Try setting your Browser Cache size again.
_________-

Hang in there, there's bound to be a solution.
And maybe an Expert will happen along to offer a helping hand.

Best Regards

Hi again Amebeo,

It's very possible that CleanUp! 4.52 will resolve the problem, since it cleans out .dat files that accumulate in the Temporary Internet File Folder, and can get quite large all by themselves. Windows does not clean out the .dat type files, but good cleaner programs like Ccleaner, ATF-Cleaner and CleanUp! 4.52 clean out .dats really well.

But if not…………

I've consulted a couple of our Expert Members, in hopes someone else can see the solution.

The nagging hunch in the back of my mind has been the possibility that a piece of malware may be causing the difficulty.
While this is unlikely, it is never a bad idea to "rule-out" the presense of malware.

Please post a HiJackThis Log, over into our Malware Removal Forum.

Create a New Folder, as follows: C:\New Folder\
Rename the New folder as follows: C:\HJT\

Download HJT.exe from here:
http://www.radiosplace.com

Direct HJT.exe to be downloaded into your new folder C:\HJT\
or
if your default download is some other location, cut/paste HJT.exe into your new folder so that it looks like this: C:\HJT\HJT.exe

Double-click on HJT.exe to open HiJackThis

Press - "Run a system scan and save a log file"

HJT will scan your machine and then open a Notepad panel where it will display the full HJT Log.

Highlight the "entire" log and use cntrl-C to Copy the Log
or use Edit - Select All - Copy commands in NotePad

Navigate to our Malware Removal Forum, here:
http://forums.tomcoyote.org/HijackThis_Log…emoval_f27.html

Select to create a New Topic
Title the New Topic something like "IE Cache Problem"

Use ctrl-v to paste the entire HJT Log file into the body of your new topic.

A Malware Removal Expert will have a look to help us rule-out that option, and the HJT Log itself may assist us in getting a different picture of the machine.

Doug