I need help with a slow computer
 

This one has me baffled.

My computer is slow today and I cannot figure out why. Here's what I know so far:

• Spybot didn't find anything
• McAfee didn't find anything
• CPU usage is fine (50% to 80%)
• RAM is fine
• hard disk has plenty of space, and was defragmented not too long ago

The only really odd thing is that Firefox is buggy. I can either click on the contents of the Window or I can click on the menu bar. I'm stuck with Opera until I get this fixed.

Any ideas? I'm desperate.

Have you tried a ctrl-alt-del and looked in the Task Manager to see if anything unfamiliar is running, or of something is sucking up lots of CPU time? (Edit, I see you have checked CPU time.)

Go to run and type msconfig and get rid of half the crap in startup you dont need.

Instead of spybot you should download SUPERAntiSpyware. It is free and works just like spybot but it doesnt only detect the easy to find stuff like Spybot does. It is better software.

Also try malwarebytes - there's free versions of it and superantispyware - I run both!

Also - if you have a symantec anti-virus program -- sometimes they go wild and hog all your CPU. Windows update manager can too.

superantispyware will detect 100 problems to spybot's 1.

Awesome software. I am even going to send them a 20 dollar paypal donation I like it so much.


It is just as easy to use.

[Deleted post]

Whoops! I went off on a mini rant about McAfee ... when it was Norton 360 that I know bogs down systems.

Sorry.

Move along now ... nothing to see here.

:o

I'll try your suggestions (except for msconfig because I already do it), but here's the thing: if this is malware of some kind then it's smart enough to fake Windows Task Manager and show only 50% CPU usage.

The usual suspects involved with slowing down a PC (feel free to add a couple...this top of head):

Slow processor
Hard drive errors or problems (no room or very fragmented)
Too many programs or processes running
Malicious programs
Not enough RAM

I think that is all of the most common issues.

What CPU/how many cores do you have? If you have even a half-way modern CPU, 50% to 80% usage is a MASSIVE amount of computational power being used. On my computer (Phenom II, 4 cores running at 2.6 GHz) normal background level of CPU usage while running several "low-demand" programs (web browser, word processor, etc) is around 2 or 3 percent utilization. Playing a full-screen DVD-resolution Divx takes up only around 2 to 4 percent. If you aren't running some sort of media-encoding software and something it typing up 50% to 80% of your CPU, something is seriously wrong.

I have a 1.7GHz Pentium-M. (multi-core? what's that?):thumbsup:

Hey kid, back in my day i ran my computer on an apple core, and I was happy to have it. Heck, when I first got started all I had was a peach pit.:rofl:

I did this again and shut down a couple more services and startup options. It seems to have cleared up the problem. Thanks.

It's not a solution, but at least it gives me time to actually fix the problem. Thank you.

Thanks for the reco...I especially like that this can be run from a USB drive without installing yet another piece of software.

I'll be honest, though, if this hadn't been recommended here (and seconded), I doubt I would have tried it. The website looks cheesy and would have made me thought it was one of those fake spyware programs!

That's what I thought. If I hadn't been desperate I would have avoided it even though it had been recommended.

get chrome, firefox stinks anyways

Chrome is all rusty.

I have a version of Firefox compiled to run on SSE2 based CPUs and it runs very well.