PC help please

vanity | 11/07/2009 | neidermeyer

[Neidermeyer]

I'm looking for ideas ... this one has me stumped....

DELL Optiplex GX150 , P3 @ 1 ghz , 512mb RAM , Windows 2000 Pro SP4 with all patches ...

AVG antivirus and Spybot S&D both run clean.

This PC will sometimes run nice and fast and other times will load windows to the point where the desktop appears and then come to a near halt... I'm pretty sure it's hardware but the usual suspects (dirt clogged or dead cpu fan , swap file too small or hdd controller screwed up by bad secondary device on the same channel) aren't the cause..

Ideas anyone?

[Thebaddog]

Download. Ccleaner and run it to clean out dead files. It’s free. Cnet has it. It might help.

[Thebaddog]

Download. Ccleaner and run it to clean out dead files. It’s free. Cnet has it. It might help.

[Roses0508]

Did you run diagnostics on the hard drive and memory chips?

[JrsyJack]

Boot up in safe mode, rerun the virus scan and registry cleaner. Sounds like a trojan or other malware has corrupted the registry.

If all else fails try a system restore to a safe point before the problem surfaced.

One other note, some Dell produced last year had similar issues that required a return to the store. Studio models I believe.

[decimon]

Have you run msconfig to see what are your startup programs? You might want to uncheck what you don’t normally use.

[JrsyJack]

One more note...get more RAM, 512MB is not really enough anymore. 1-2GB preferable.

[TheZMan]

When it stalls out, open the task manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and see what’s eating your CPU.

[kingu]

Go to My Computer, and check the properties on each drive to ensure that indexing is turned off - number one reason why Dell’s come to a creaping crawl.

[EricT.]

Either your hard drive is on it’s last legs, your memory has something wrong with it, or your motherboard is fixing to die.

[Ethrane]

Running Windows 2000, I doubt Dell produced it last year...LOL

[GovernmentShrinker]

Next time it happens, turn off your antivirus/spybot/etc and see if that fixes it. Sometimes these things periodically go into overdrive and slow everything to a crawl. If the problem is worse when loading sites with lots of extra stuff (commercial news with a zillion ads, eBay listings, etc), try turning off Phishing Filter — it screens every single frame/item that’s trying to load, and this can easily be in the dozens for a single webpage such as the examples I gave.

[Neidermeyer]

Startup is clean , I prefer to alter that through the “expert” menu in “Spybot S&D”.

[Rodney Dangerfield]

512MB should be plenty to run W2K SP4

[Neidermeyer]

512 is max the mb will recognize ,, and is PLENTY for W2K-Pro.

[Krankor]

Is your computer plugged in?

[Neidermeyer]

Go to My Computer, and check the properties on each drive to ensure that indexing is turned off - number one reason why Dell’s come to a creaping crawl.

*********************************************

I would think that would happen at every startup... creating an IX for the vtoc should be fairly quick and painless..

[GovernmentShrinker]

And honestly, Windows 2000 simply can’t support a lot of what’s on today’s websites — that’s probably a big part of your problem. But before giving up (assuming you don’t want to upgrade) make sure you have the highest version of Explorer that Windows 2000 can support, and that you have installed all the random stuff that modern webpages want, to the extent that Windows 2000 is able to support them (but there are some key ones it can’t support).

I had these issues with a Windows Me machine, refused to buy a new computer with Vista, and ended up being very happy with a refurbished HP Pavilion with XP that I got off eBay — $175 including shipping, restored to original factory configuration, and original factory discs included.

[Neidermeyer]

Did you run diagnostics on the hard drive and memory chips?

**********************************************

I'll do that .. I think I have a good (pre XP) copy of Norton Utilities somewhere .. or maybe the dell website has a utility.

[Wierzbowski]

Is this one of the small form factor 150s by any chance? Those things cook hard drives after a few years like nobody’s business. They won’t stop working altogether, but they’ll just slow down so much that they’re not worth working with any more.

If you happen to have a spare hard drive knocking about, I’d swap it out and try that.

[Neidermeyer]

Is your computer plugged in?

******************************************

Actually right this moment it is not ,, the covers are off.

[reagan_fanatic]

Doubt it’s hardware related. More likely Windows has become corrupted or one of your installed programs that runs at start-up may have become corrupted.

Go to your START button and click run, type MSCONFIG in the box and hit enter. Click on start-up and un-check KNOWN programs you’ve installed - only uncheck the ones you are familiar with. Click OK then re-start your computer and see if that had any effect. If it did, then you’ll know it was one of the programs you un-checked that is causing the problem.

Go back to MSCONFIG and re-check them one at a time, re-starting your computer each time until you find the offending program. Leave it unchecked or go into CONTROL PANEL, click on ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS and un-install the program from there.

Hope that helps.

[Neidermeyer]

Either your hard drive is on it’s last legs, your memory has something wrong with it, or your motherboard is fixing to die.

*********************************************

If the diagnostics don't indicate anything I'll clone the hdd and try it out... I don't have extra memory but I'll remove bank "1" leaving bank "0" to run on ... if it's memory it'll probably be the higher addresses as this doesn't happen until after most things load.. and then only part of the time..

[Neidermeyer]

And honestly, Windows 2000 simply can’t support a lot of what’s on today’s websites — that’s probably a big part of your problem.

******************************************************

I have IE6 and the latest Firefox .. that isn't the issue ,, the problem occurs after loading the desktop ,, doesn't matter what app you try to start ... it's not a browser issue.. I can upgrade to XP Pro if I need to but with the memory limits on this machine I want to keep W2K ... besides W2K=XP=Vista=W7 ,, all the same modules ,, just different gingerbread...

[Neidermeyer]

Is this one of the small form factor 150s by any chance? Those things cook hard drives after a few years like nobody’s business.

*********************************************

Not a SFF (but it is the "3/4" size) but I will clone the drive as a next step .. (I don't have an in-line W2K disk and adding all the patches through windoze update takes forever if you go that route)

[GovernmentShrinker]

I have a Vista laptop and the second-hand XP desktop, and there definitely IS a difference. The Vista experience was what convinced me to go with a used XP box when I needed a “new” computer. And I don’t think getting the XP Pro “downgrade” for a Vista-loaded computer is a good idea (not techie enough to have a clue why, but I’ve heard bad things — not the same as real, original XP).

[Neidermeyer]

Doubt it’s hardware related. More likely Windows has become corrupted or one of your installed programs that runs at start-up may have become corrupted.

*********************************************

I'll go through startup again to be sure ...

[Neidermeyer]

I’m on a Vista machine right now and have a XP box also ... the only reason W2K can’t do everything a XP or Vista box can do is because MSFT doesn’t want to support the older OS’s although they certainly could come out with a SP5 that has all the “under the covers” upgrades and eliminates the BS limits on the level of MediaPlayer and IE supported,, they want to sell Vista/W7 ..

[Roses0508]

You should be able to download the Dell diagnostics from their website. www.support.dell.com. Use the Service Tag from yoru machine and pick your operating system from the drop down. Scroll through the list of drivers until you find the diagnostics program.

Also you can try running the system file checker. It will replace corrupted operating system files with good copies if it can find them.

I’m Dell certified, I’ll e-mail you offline.

[TheCipher]

One other thing you can do. Download HijackThis and run the diagnostic. It will create a log file of what is running on your system. Go through it line by line to see if there is something out of place.

[bandit123]

try hitting
control alt delete
then click processes tab
look at the bottom to see cpu usage
if its under 10% then i have no idea whats wrong
if its like 30- 90 % see what is using the available
memory , most likely a spy ware or something
if you don't recognise the process that is using alot of memory end that process and see if it then works fast again

i use avg free to keep my registry clean
but i bet you can find the culprit under the processes tab
, your ram can be upgraded real easy and you can do it your self , 512 is a bit slow 1gig is cheap like 30 bucks
that will likely help too

[lrb111]

download cwshredder and run it before doing anything else. It checks for about 60 variants that corrupt everything from msconfig to your toolbars.
Then www.malwarebytes.org and download the free version. Run the scanner under safe mode.
That get you to square one for hardware testing.

[JoeProBono]

AVG antivirus was slowing down one of my machines and I replaced it with Avira, which solved the problem.

[Yosemitest]

See if you can load and run Advanced SystemCare™ Free 100% Freeware and see if that helps find registry errors.

Then load and run Spyware Terminator 2.6.2.456 and see if that finds your problems.

Finally download and run SpywareBlaster to prevent problems from coming into your computer.

Remember to update these programs at least once a week (I find Tuesdays best).

Good luck.

[EricT.]

Since it’s a Dell, you should be able to boot into the Utility Partition and run the full diagnostics.

This is the best way I know how to check everything out on a Dell. It has helped me find bad memory on more than one computer.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

So what happened?