Sluggish computer

Hi all, I am from India and I am very much impressed by the advice/help offered in this forum. I am a newbie and any stupidity on my part may please be excused My computer is fairly old. Bought it in 2001. The specs are as shown below:- Win XP SP2 Pentium 3 - 1.0 GHz 128 MB RAM Samsung 40 GB HDD Samsung CD RW I have AVG Anti-virus and Spybot S&D installed in the machine. Though the machine is old, it was decently performing. All that changed when recently there was a bulging capacitors problem found in the motherboard and a service was done. However, after the service was done, the machine is almost crawling and it takes inordinate time for any application to open/run. I tried running Spybot but it could scan only 75% of the computer after running a whole night!! I am not sure as to whether the problem is due to the hardware problem (the machine aging fast) or due to any malware. Kindly help. Please inform if any other information are needed. Thanks and regards S.Mualidharan

Hi, Welcome to the WTT forums Sorry to hear of the problems with your machine. When capacitors start to bulge, it generally means that the motherboard needs to be replaced completely. Sometimes, however a skilled technician may be able to remove each individual bulged and failing capacitor and solder into place replacement ones, of the correct type and specification, although it is often difficult to find them, and tricky work, correctly soldering them into place, without causing additional damage to other components. Any exudate, ( looks like a sticky liquid) that may have leaked from the bulged capacitors, if allowed to contaminate other components on the motherboard can also create problems in the future as it can cause damage that takes some time to take effect. As you mention that you have had a "service" done, it is not clear if the motherboard has been replaced or repaired and at this stage it is not possible to rule out hardware as a potential cause of some of the problems. Running Windows XP on 128Mb of RAM will never be able to provide top speed or performance, and maybe you have considered the possibility of fitting some more? Running Peer to Peer (P2P) file sharing on your machine is not recommended and I would normally suggest that you uninstall this, however I note that you have also posted an HJT log in our malware removal forum and therefore I recommend that you make no changes in your machine or its systems until your log has been analysed by a trained malware fighter and and a response received from them. The experts on the malware forum are very busy, so if you can, try to be patient and wait for a response from them ( I know this can be tough), but also resist the temptation to make a "follow up" post in the malware forum ( until you have received a response from them) as they look first for posts with 0 responses. It's fine to respond to us here, but please note that we don't analyse HJT logs here on this sub forum. Once the malware expert has told you that your log looks clean, please post back here on this forum if you still are having problems and we will do our best to help you. Regards paws

Dear "paws", Thanks for your fast response. I will sure wait for the results of my HJT log posted in the other forum. Once I get it, I will post the same here for your further advice. Till then bi.

Hi, Ok. but please don't post a HJT log here on this sub-forum….only do so in the malware removal forum. Thanks paws