Posted on 04/13/2009 8:20:14 PM PDT by Blogger
Several months ago, my computer crashed on me. Wouldn't even get to the beginning stages of boot up. Lights flickered if you hit the button, but beyond that, nothing. So, I took it to Best Buy where I bought it and where it was still under warrantee. They determined it was a fried motherboard. Consistent with the warrantee, the Geek Squad replaced it. Ever since that time, it takes about 2-3 minutes to boot up. Everything else seems to run fine, but boot up is excruciatingly slow. Any ideas why what normally took 30 seconds or so now takes 5 times a long?
Supposedly they only replaced the motherboard.
Download and install Spybot Search and Destroy (Spybot S&D), which is free. Don't do the Tea Timer, but do allow it to do the IE Helper (Tea Timer takes a vast amount of overhead, strangely so). Also, you should have Windows Defender on your system. Make sure that is loaded and always running. If not, that is a free download from Microsoft.
Do the Updates with Spybot, then Immunize and then scan your whole hard drive. After that, do download and do al of this one last time with Spyware Doctor via the Google Pack (update and such that, too). You can leave Spybot on your system without affecting performance if you don't have Tea Timer on) but you need to fully disable Spyware Doctor because they load up modules that really only should stay resident with the purchased version.
Spyware Doctor is very good at finding and removing bad stuff, but it takes a lot of resources (over 100+MB of RAM, all the time, for the last version I saw).
No single program catches everything. I bounce between the programs mentioned in my posts to assure I've got it all, too. By the way, sometimes these programs can do a “false positive,” saying you have an infection of one sort when you don't have that one. Just keep that in mind, but eliminate what seems appropriate.
Tell us how that all went. Sorry about your problems.
You can turn those two off ( they are turned on by default ). They are not really needed and just use memory that can be freed for other tasks.
There might be intermittent errors in the hardware though. Or maybe something is wrong with the voltage coming put of the power supply.
Ignore all these people, your beeber is stuned!
Get the following free programs off the internet:
ccleaner
adaware
spybot
Run them all, especially ccleaner to clean up your registry. Keep running them until they all find nothing to clean up.
Also, turn off your indexing: My Computer - C drive. Right-click to properties - uncheck both check boxes at the bottom of the general tab. Then keep your files organized so you don’t have to search for them.
Then run disk cleanup and disk defragmenter under System Tools.
Switch to Firefox and install the Adblock Plus Plug-in. Search for documents about how to speed up Firefox, and follow the directions.
“they could have left the bios setting on which scans all of memory. “
You are way too old.
Probably because you don’t know how to spell “slow” without all those extra W’s.
:)
The question is whether they replaced the motherboard with the same motherboard. If they used a different motherboard and did not reinstall Windows, it causes confusion when booting.
Auuugh! the Eeek! squad!
Yeah, I know, but I had had them over here 4 times already and this guy was just motivated to find an answer.
NOD32 is very sufficient as a primary defense, and if you are slow already, these add-ons (if realtime scanners are left running) will only make you slower.
I am also inclined to check RAM (and CPU) to be certain that the machine is as you gave it to the shop, again as others have suggested.
Another thought crosses my mind- Were you set up previously to hibernate rather than using a full shutdown/start each time? Most Vista users find the hibernate option to be much more comfortable... Your boot time restoring from hibernation would be mere seconds (maybe 30/45 secs YMMV), and you would only experience a full restart if Windows (or certain types of programs) required it.
Yea, I guess you never know these days. Sorry for the snarkiness. Of course, it doesn't hurt to have a router with a firewall between you and the internet.
I recently had some thing that was hijacking google clicks and displaying male enhancement banner ads on every page. Adware and SuperAntiSpyware were able to point it out, but do nothing about it. McAfee was already disabled by the thing. The only product I found that could remove it was adwarebytes.org.
This is what is affectionately known as “bit rot.”
The solution is not fun: backup, reformat, reinstall.
We had issues in XP and have no idea why. Backed up all files to flash drives. Reimaged the system, reinstalled applications, put the files back. Beautiful.
During the process, we learned that there were many applications we didn’t want, need or use. For instance, with the Dell system, we automatically got some stuff that created problems. And there were a lot of files that were junk. I’m sure that wasn’t the reason for the problem, but it’s nice to have everything neat and clean now.
Most DSL/Cable modems have built-in firewalls. Personally, I roll with both (belt and suspenders).
When my rebuilt machine was hit it was behind a hardware firewall.
BTW: A good tool is “Shields Up” from Gibson Research. I have used it for years to test my firewalls on both linux and Windows machines. It will check to see how visible your machine is from the outside. It will scan all your IP ports.
You usually don’t want your machine responding to any unsolicited query. Even a negative acknowledgment gives away your whereabouts. Some of the older routers would respond with a “nack” packet in response to a ping on your IP address. Responding with a “nack” is similar to the old hack about the chicken thief who calls out in the dark “Nobody in here but us chickens, Boss!” :)
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