Sloooooooooooooow laptop!

[jamie60509]

Hi

 

My laptop has suddenly started running very very slowly and acting quite strangely. I can't think of anything that I have done over the past few days to make this happen and have tried everything I can think of to try and work out what is causing this. Please can someone help?

 

I have a HP G6000 laptop with Vista Home Professional installed. I have a 1.70 GHz Dual core processor, 2 gigs of RAM and 150Gb HDD. Up until a few days ago I was quite happy with the performance of my system but now it is just causing me to get stressed! When I turn the laptop on it takes quite a while to get to the login screen and a similarly long time to actually log in and be ready to use. When I try to open programmes like Firefox or Word, or even when I try to drag a file to the recycle bin or open the Start menu the system freezes for between 5-40 seconds. When I finally get Firefox to open it freezes every 5 minutes or so for around 15 seconds. Everything just seems very sluggish and it takes forever to do even the most basic tasks!

 

I have tried scanning my system with Panda AntiVirus, Spybot S&D with no results. I have checked what programmes are starting up with windows and there are only the bare minimum enabled (antivirus, firewall, mousepad, sidebar and graphics card) I have defraged my hard disc, scanned it for errors and have run out of ideas!

 

Can anybody think of anything that I can try or of any software that can check for any problems?

 

Many thanks

Jamie

[Tony D]

First thing I would try is to boot into Safe Mode. That loads the minimal resources needed for your computer to run. Some things won't work. you won't have Internet access, and the screen won't look normal. That's OK. See if your applications work as you would expect and let us know the results.

 

Reboot your computer in Safe Mode.

 

* If the computer is running, shut down Windows, and then turn off the power.

* Wait 30 seconds, and then turn the computer on.

* Start tapping the F8 key. The Windows Advanced Options Menu appears. If you begin tapping the F8 key too soon, some computers display a "keyboard error" message. To resolve this, restart the computer and try again. If F8 doesn't work try F5.

* Ensure that the Safe Mode option is selected.

* Press Enter. The computer then begins to start in Safe mode.

* Log on with an account that has administrator priviledges, usually your own account (NOT the account named Administrator).

[jamie60509]

Thanks for your reply Kelly!

 

I did as you suggested and tried in Safe Mode and I can confirm that my system is running at perfect speed.

 

What does this mean? Could it be a virus or something?

 

Thanks again

Jamie

[Dalo Harkin]

When you load safe mode - it loads up the basic services that your system needs to run - nothing else.

Do you have sufficient space on the HDD?

[jamie60509]

I have 68.8 Gb of free space

 

Back in normal mode now and Vista is crawling again :-(

[Dalo Harkin]

You say that you stopped items at start up -

did you open a command window (cmd.exe) and then type msconfig

then go to start up?

can you please repeat that process and take a screen shot of the items on the start up tab please.

[jamie60509]

I disabled a few things from startup yesterday (itunes, Java, Quicktime) by typing msconfig into the Run box

 

Here's a screenshot of what my Startup list looks like now, there are a few from HP and nVidia that I'm not sure I need but they have always been on the list and have never caused any problems in the past.

 

http://d.imagehost.org/0438/Capture.jpg

 

Thanks again for your help

Jamie

[RandyL]

Since it was slow to get to the logon screen but it worked fast to get there in safe mode I doubt it's malware or a hard drive issue. Since you say you have minimal startup items then the only think I can think of is a device or driver issue.

 

Check Device Manager or Event Viewer for problems.

[jamie60509]

Thanks for your reply RandyL

 

I checked Device Manager and can't see any problems listed there, please can you tell me how I get to Event Viewer?

 

Thanks

[Dalo Harkin]

No, they are all fine :confused:

I agree - in terms of things that can physically slow a system - GPU drivers can do it, but other than that unless you have something causing a serious lag - open task manager and then click on processes - whats the top 5 sapping the mem usage?

[jamie60509]

I've taken a screenshot of Task Manager

 

http://d.imagehost.org/0595/Capture.jpg

 

I'm quite quzzled by SearchIndexer.exe being there as I disabled indexing (I thought this was only supposed to run while the system is idle anyway?)

[Tony D]

Although you disabled some items in Startup tab, you still need to go to the Services tab. Hide all Microsoft Services and disable the rest.

 

On the Task Manager, I like to click twice in the CPU column so that it sorts by CPU usage. The highest usage process will 'float' to the top of the list. Then you can see what processes are robbing you of CPU resources.

Edited October 14, 2008 by Tony D

[Dalo Harkin]

67 processes is about 20-30 too many.

[jamie60509]

Thanks for the advice guys

 

I have orderer the task manager by CPU usage and the process that is taking between 90-95% is System Idle Process which I understand from doing a quick Google search is normal?

 

I have disabled everything in the Services tab that is not a Microsoft process and I am still getting very sluggish performance

 

Thanks for your help

[Tony D]

System idle should be a bit higher in my opinion. If your system was doing nothing, the System Idle would be at 100%. I usually see it in the high 90's.

 

What are the other top hitters?

[jamie60509]

Hi Kelly

 

The other processes seem to be taskmgr.exe, dwm.exe, explorer.exe and firefox.exe - all of which are fluctuating between 1-3% each

 

Everything else on the list is using 0%

[Tony D]

OK - that looks normal. I should have noticed that you're on Vista which accounts for dwm.exe.

 

At this point, you disabled unneeded startup items and services, but still have problems. Start looking for malware. I'll leave that task to the experts here.

[Dalo Harkin]

I have defraged my hard disc, scanned it for errors and have run out of ideas!

 

When you say defragged - did you just run the defrag once - can you run an analysis ONLY and post a screen shot please.

 

I am not convinced that this is Malware related, yet

[Seth]

Since it's fine in safe mode, the most likely suspect will be a startup item.

 

Disconnect from the internet, go back to msconfig, and click on the "Startup" tab. Choose "Disable All" then Apply. How does the computer run now?

 

After the test, enable the items you disabled and connect to the internet again.