Very sluggish machine

[Glaswegian]

Gmer is clean - thanks for posting the log - one thing less to worry about. I'll bow out and leave in the hands of the experts.

 

[4on4off]

AceInfinity,

Finally got a little bit more time before I go in for my first of two 12 nights shifts.

Still haven't gotten to the event logs if I remember someone told me that JRT I used removes them but I will try to find them anyway.

Just wanted to say that I am currently booted in safe mode with networking as you suggested and I figured what the heck and I would run a virus scan again in safe mode along with some other things to test out the repsonse.

Well I am curently in safe mode running malwarebytes and watching videos on youtube. I will say that I wouldn't be able to do this in reg mode since merely surfing and responding to these posts was quite time consuming on its own.

Just thought I would add this as I didn't get back to this suggestion before I responded to you last night.

4

 

[4on4off]

A note on thisisu's JRT (I've only used it once, on my own W7x64), I consider it a post-diagnostic cleaner, as it removes the Windows log files.

Have you checked the speed of the IDE/ATA channels in Device Manager? If the hard drive channel has dropped to PIO, it will have a drastic effect on Windows' speed: DMA reverts to PIO | Windows Problem Solver

5. Check Your IDE Port Mode

First check what mode your secondary IDE port is currently working in. Go to Device Manager: right-click on My Computer, select Properties, click on the Hardware tag, click on the Device Manager button, click on the plus sign to the left of IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller, double-click on the secondary IDE channel, click on Extended Settings and check whether it is set to DMA when available. Directly underneath that setting is a grey field that shows the actual working mode of your IDE channel. You want the highest possible DMA or Ultra DMA mode there, and you definitely don't want PIO mode.

If the Extended Settings tab is not there, perhaps another driver is used, probably from the manufacturer of the IDE ATAPI controller. You can still perform a simple test. In the Task Manager activate the option View, Show kernel times. Then put a high load on the device, for example by copying a large file, and check whether the kernel times are minimal (red line). If you observe considerable kernel times, roughly around half of the total load, then the device is running in PIO mode, which is bad. The whole purpose of the DMA mode is to relieve the processor (in kernel mode) of this load.

I tried to do as you instructed.

I didn't see "extended settings" so I clicked on Advacned settings.

I see this:

Device 0
Device Type: Auto Detection
Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Current Transfer Mode: Not Applicable

Device1
All are the same as Device0

I tried to show kernel times but under the view tab I do not see ann option for that. Not sure if I am looking at the correct thing.

4

 

[Tekno Venus]

The very fact it runs smoothly in safe mode tells me something. Try a clean boot as one of your next troubleshooting steps. How to configure Windows XP to start in a "clean boot" state

 

[4on4off]

Tekno,

I would like to revise the clean install timeline. I original thought it to be eight years but I am sure it was between 3 and 4 now.

Frostwire I know it not a good with but my daughter uses it and has for a few years and never been a problem. I will check tho to see if she still does because she may be using spotify now. If so I will get rid of frostwire.

I have not used the uniblue programs you listed for a couple of years and ectually I seemed to think it was before the last install but that don't make sense. I actually have another machine that I think those programs caused some problems on that runs vista and recently did a clean install on it. That pc is not in use now and could be considered for takent the place of this one if things appear hopeless.

Don't have the time at the moment to use the ubuntu as I have a 12 hour night shift a few hours from now and should get a nap in before I go. I do want to try it tho.

Also, I am currently on the xp maching and I am in safe mode. I am running a malwarebytes scan while watching videos on youtube while typing this up. I was not able to do that in reg mode. I gave it a shot as AceInfinity suggested and while it isn't optimal I could not do all this in reg mode on this machine last night.

4

 

[4on4off]

Gmer is clean - thanks for posting the log - one thing less to worry about. I'll bow out and leave in the hands of the experts.

Thank you for looking at that and that is great news.

4

 

[4on4off]

Temps look fine.

Thank you for taking a look. I haven't crack the case yet as I did not have any canned air but my wife is at the store and will pick some up. My fan has been running nonstop since I booted up this go around.

 

[4on4off]

There doesn't appear to be anything hugely wrong with this installation (I am not qualified to read the GMER log tho').
As such I'd have to suspect that the Windows installation is just getting old and it needs a refresh.

This was common with XP systems years ago, and the solution was a wipe and reinstall of Windows. It's due to the cumulative effect of years of updates/installations/removals on the system.

That is definitely something I am not ruling out. I do have another machine that is not in use at the moment that has Vista Home premium on it and I may consider using it and getting away form xp since it is so old anyhow. I could move the kids stuff over to it and let them get on with their school work.

Thanks for your input.

4

 

[4on4off]

The very fact it runs smoothly in safe mode tells me something. Try a clean boot as one of your next troubleshooting steps. How to configure Windows XP to start in a "clean boot" state

Tekno,

I restarted into reg mode and tried watching the same video on youtube and run a malware bytes scan. It was noticeably boggy in comparison to safe mode.

I am currently in clean boot and as in safe mode I am able to run the malwarebytes scan, watch videos on youtube and navigate this site. The videos are not choppy like when in reg mode.

4

 

[writhziden]

That's great news that the clean boot worked. Now you can add things back in groups or one at a time to see if you can determine what startup item or service is causing the slowness.


Check for services causing conflicts.

With the clean boot state enabled, do the following steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type msconfig.exe in the box, and then press Enter to start the System Configuration utility.
2. Click the Services tab, and then click to select the Hide all Microsoft services check box.
3. Click to select half of the check boxes in the Service list.
4. Click OK, and then click Restart.
5. After the computer finishes restarting, determine whether the problem still occurs.
   • If the problem still occurs, repeat steps 1-4, but clear half of the checked boxes in the Service list that you originally selected.
   • If the problem does not occur, repeat steps 1-4, selecting only half of the remaining check boxes that are cleared in the Service list. Repeat these steps until you have selected all the check boxes.
   • If you still experience the problem after only one service is selected in the Service list, this means that the selected service causes the problem.
   • After you determine the service that causes the problem, contact the program manufacturer to determine whether the problem can be resolved. Or, run the System Configuration utility, and then click to clear the check box for the problem item.

If no services cause problems, check for startup items causing conflicts.

With the clean boot state enabled, do the following steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type msconfig.exe in the box, and then press Enter to start the System Configuration utility.
2. Click the Startup tab.
3. Click to select half of the check boxes in the Startup list.
4. Click OK, and then click Restart.
5. After the computer finishes restarting, determine whether the problem still occurs.
   • If the problem still occurs, repeat steps 1-4, but clear half of the checked boxes in the Startup list that you originally selected.
   • If the problem does not occur, repeat steps 1-4, selecting only half of the remaining check boxes that are cleared in the Startup list. Repeat these steps until you have selected all the check boxes.
   • If you still experience the problem after only one service is selected in the Startup list, this means that the selected software causes the problem.
   • After you determine the startup program that causes the problem, contact the program manufacturer to determine whether the problem can be resolved. Or, run the System Configuration utility, and then click to clear the check box for the problem item.

Steps taken from the Windows 7 troubleshooting guide using clean startup, and they were adapted for Windows XP clean startup troubleshooting.

How to perform a clean boot to troubleshoot a problem in Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8​

 

[AceInfinity]

As I mentioned, especially for your fan; the reason it is running nonstop, and taking into consideration the concept of occam's razor, your fan is working hard because your system is in "overdrive" mode. So the fan has to work extra hard to keep everything cool internally while expensive computational tasks are being executed. Some program is probably the cause of this, so tally up a list of your startup configuration, and see which ones when disabled, have the greatest impact on performance gains.

I believe CCleaner will provide good full logs for this kind of stuff as well.

 

[4on4off]

Update:

Got up today from my first graveyard and started messing around with doing a clean boot and deselecting services to try to narrow things down. I got all the way to the end and I may have noticed something I overlooked.

When playing the video on youtube you have a choice for video quality all the way up to 1080P. I noticed sometimes when I selected it originally it reverted back to 360 for some reason. Anyway, I made sure to be consistent this go around and use 1080P like I do on my personal system, habit I guess.

Anyway, I disabled all the services after hiding microsoft services and played just the video at 1080P in clean boot and it was laggy. I backed it back down to 720P and it was smooth. Tossed in the malwarebytes scan and it was still smooth. I went back and enabled all the services and played the video at 720P with the malwarebytes scan running in reg mode and the video was smooth. Perhaps this system can't handle the 1080P regardless.

When we started on the venture the other day it was boggy without the video or malwarebyte scan test running. Just surfing the web. From my point of view it is most definitely running better after performing all the steps originally suggested. I opened it up and used the canned air to clean it and the fan is not sounding like a race car everytime I start it up..

So to summarize I scanned it with:

ESET(found 1 item listed as multiple threats related to frostwire)
Tdskiller(found nothing)
SAS(found 68 typical tracking cookies)
Malwarebytes( found nothing )
JRT(found and removed a bunch of stuff)..thanks by the way for the heads up about being a post diagnostic cleaner!
Adwarecleaner(found and removed a bunch of stuff)
GMER(looked clean)
Defragged.

I will have the kids give it a go and see if they can see any difference and I will report back. They would know better than me as I only jump on it once in awhile to clean it out.

Thanks again for all the pointers and input. I always learn something new here.

4

 

[Tekno Venus]

My apologies, forgot about this thread in the light of lots of homework. Very sorry about that...

Anyway, that's good news. In all honesty, I wouldn't expect a system of that age to be able to handle 1080p video, those old GPU's really weren't meant to handle that greater resolution. It's great to hear the PC is running a bit smoother now.

We'll be here if anything starts to go wrong again,

Stephen