Posted on 01/11/2007 10:12:41 AM PST by LouAvul
Thanks for the help.
I love you tagline.
I ran off to a war zone.
My best friend of many years said, "Interesting way of dealing with a midlife crisis." ;-)
My guess is that you need to look at your startup programs, the number of memory resident processes actually running after startup, and also get a good program to maintain your regsitry file. Registry Mechanic or RegCure are both good.
Maintaining a healthy registry file and cleaning out unessential processes is as important as virus, spyware, and hijacking protection, and almost as important as having enough memory and the amount of processing you have. The things I have talked about here drag down what you have and so you need to make sure they are looked at.
Ditto on the AVG. I was running Zonealarm also for a while, but it seemed to conflict. W2KSP4 here.
Even with protection, it's handy to use the netstat command often. I did once find a virus using netstat that AVG missed!
There are several things that can cause this.
First, I'd check your hardware...How much RAM do you have? For Windows XP, 1 gig is good, 2 gigs is better, and 512 megs of RAM is simply inadequate. How full is your hard disk drive? In general, hard disks start slowing down when they are about 50% full and really cause a slowdown when they are 80% full.
Then, check the software: clear out your browser cache, uninstall any unused or un-needed programs, run both Spybot and Adaware to scan your system for mal/spywre, and make sure that you have an updated copy of Norton Antivirus running.
From your Start menu, choosen run and enter "msconfig" to see what Windows is loading when it starts.
Finally, if you're recently installed Internet Explorer 7, this tends to slow down Windows XP.
Run disk cleanup and defragmenter.
...and most importantly, next time you buy a computer, make sure it's a Macintosh.
Nope- I only clean the crumbs ;)
Relativity effects.
It's actually no slower than before, but with the computer exhibiting all that zippiness, you end up aging more than it does. (See Twin Paradox)
That is exactly the response I was looking for, thanks.
Is that why when you're on a Greyhound bus you pass everything on the freeway, but take 15 hours to make a 6 hour drive?
Just as an FYI: This add/remove software not only removes programs, but also uninstalls any associated registry keys with each app. that is uninstalled. Maybe you've already heard about this, but I hadn't until maybe a month ago. Works pretty good:
http://www.download.com/Your-Uninstaller-2006/3000-2096_4-10619595.html
It will COMPLETELY uninstall just about anything.
No, that's because of "Someone Else's Relativity" effects. It seems like 15 hours, due to the jerk in the seat behind you, but it really only takes 6.
AVG finds tons of spooky stuff that Norton used to routinely miss. That made me do the switch. It may have its holes, but for a decent AV that's also free, it does a good job.
AVG is bad at spyware/trojans though. NoSpyware was used once to remove a rather persistant trojan that AVG simply failed to detect.
Running Linux here....don't have these problems....
Giving a bump for the old CCleaner. Great suggestion/recommendation. Probably the best at what it does....
http://www.ccleaner.com
A lot of good advice on this thread
Norton certainly is bloatware. It can also be difficult to uninstall. In fact, Symantec offers a removal tool, to help people get the crap off their systems.
This is often used after "un-installing" via Add/Remove program. (E.G. Add/Remove > reboot > use Symantec tool > reboot > install AVG or Avast!).
Good luck.
That's when I noticed it really slowed down. Plus I'm having other issues with windows (since the downloads) but Microsoft won't respond to my complaints until I give them $35.
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