Solve : Why is my computer running so slow?????

1.	Solve : Why is my computer running so slow?????
Answer» i picked up a trojan horse virus and my anti virus couldn't get shot of it so I reformatted my drive and now I have big problems. My machine is RUNNING so slow it took 2 days to install MS XP back onto the hard drive despite a message saying it would take 39 minutes. I can't get a firewall or some anti virus software to install it all keeps failing and I am not sure what to try now. Do I need a new hard drive a new CPU or a new system altogether. Every time the machine boots up it keeps telling me the CPU has changed - it hasn't - it's still a P4 but I am now ready to slash my wrists or at least throw the machine through the window, can any one help??? what the make of the hard drive... type msinfo32 in the run box to find out...did you disconnect the pc from the net when you re-installed winxp...did you use recovery disks... do you meean it states that its updating system files or words to that affect.....Well, when it says that you computer has "changed", then it's probably a trojan messing with your startup files..... If you can get on the internet, see if you can get a virus scan..... [glb]Flame[/glb] Quote i picked up a trojan horse virus and my anti virus couldn't get shot of it so I reformatted my drive and now I have big problems. My machine is running so slow it took 2 days to install MS XP back onto the hard drive despite a message saying it would take 39 minutes. I can't get a firewall or some anti virus software to install it all keeps failing and I am not sure what to try now. Do I need a new hard drive a new CPU or a new system altogether. Every time the machine boots up it keeps telling me the CPU has changed - it hasn't - it's still a P4 but I am now ready to slash my wrists or at least throw the machine through the window, can any one help??? You really need to start over Rosy. What is the make of your computer and do you have an original XP CD or is it an OEM installation? If you do have an original XP CD and you have a friend with a computer and a good CD Burning program you should use their machine first of all to make yourself a nex XPSP2 CD by using AutoStreamer 1·0 (freeware) before attempting to clean install. If you download AutoStreamer to a WORKING computer and also download the 266Mb SP2 file from the Microsoft Download site, start AutoStreamer and put your XP CD in the CD-ROM drive. AutoStreamer will identify your XP CD and then ask you to point to the downloaded SP2 file. It will take about 25 minutes to merge the core files from your XP CD together with the updated SP2 files and will produce an .ISO file from which you make a NEW XP CD which has Service Pack 2 integrated into it. You need a good quality CDR (DON'T use a CD-RW!) and you'll need to choose to burn a CD-ROM (ISO) in the burning program. This new CD will be bootable just like your XP CD and you should see all the folders and files on it just like your XP CD, so the idea is NOT to - copy - the .ISO file to a CD you MUST choose to burn a CD-ROM (ISO) Sorry to holler at you but it is a common mistake that folks make. Take another CDR with you and download and then burn to the CDR these programs, AVG Free Edition anti-virus, (You'll need to use that coputer's email to get the activation code for AVG) Zone Alarm Free Firewall, SpyBot SD, AdAware SE and SpywareBlaster. (No activation codes NEEDED for any of these programs.) NOW you should be able to start over wxith a clean installation. SO boot to the newly burned XPSP2 CD and choose to delete all old partitions. Then make a new 8192Mb drive C: to install XP to. You can make up to three further Logical drives if you want to. E.G. I have an 80Gb drive which has 80,000,000,000, Bytes (This is known as the decimal size.) To get the Binary sizes you have to divide by 1024 three time to get: 78125000,Kb , 76293,95,Mb & 74,51,Gb I use a 8192Mb drive C: for the operating system and all programs. (Exactly 8·0Gb) A 8192Mb drive D: for the My Documents folder. A 3072,Mb drive E: for Email and the rest as an archive drive and for all my music files. (Exactly 3·0Gb) When you have formatted your new drives with NTFS, you can begin installing but ENSURE that your computer is NOT connected to the internet until the installation is complete. Formatting DIRECTLY to NTFS makes sure that you get optimised cluster sizes of 4096 bytes per allocation unit. It also should produce unfragmented Master File Tables and both of these factors will make your computer run better (faster) as will sufficient physical RAM. 1024Mb is a good figure for XP as it means that your system will rarely use the paging file and as RAM is faster than using the paging file your system will become much more responsive. For user passwords I only ever use - user - and this gives me the title of Administrator for this computer. (XP Professional.) When you have re-installed XP you should then install AVG anti-virus and Zone Alarm firewall BEFORE you go on-line. When you do go on-line UPDATE the AVG anti-virus program FIRST of all, go OFF-LINE and run a full scan. Then install SpyBot SD , AdAware SE and SpywareBlaster , update them all and run scans with SpyBot & AdAware BEFORE you do any more installing. If the system comes up clean then fully update the XP Operating System. When all is well you can add all your other programs, and when everything is running perfectly I would advise you to use a drive imaging program, such as TeraByte Unlimited's Image for DOS, to make a drive image of drive C: burned to good quality CDRs to use in future to be able to do a FULL recovery if you have any problems in future. Your data should remain safe on drives D: , E: & F: Using the new XPSP2 CD will give you a much cleaner installation and means that you have for less updating to do. Your systrem should be trouble free if you maintain your security and scan regularly for Trojans as these are what start the problems on your system drive, often attracting and allowing viruses to enter your system. If you use Diskeeper 9 Professional which can be used with both XP Home and Professional editions, you can defragment the paging file AND the Master File Tables (MFTs) and you can also use Frag-Shield which comes with DK9 to ensure that the MFTs are the right size so as to prevent fragmentation, all of which helps to keep your system running smoothly. Quote what the make of the hard drive... type msinfo32 in the run box to find out...did you disconnect the pc from the net when you re-installed winxp...did you use recovery disks...<Every time the machine boots up it keeps telling me the CPU has changed > do you meean it states that its updating system files or words to that affect..... It's a HP hard drive and yes I was disconnected from the net. I used the XP disc to try to reinstall it but the disc got stuck in a loop and it wouldn't install so I downloaded the 6 recovery discs from the MS website and I used this before I used the XP disc again. It is working OK but it is running so slow. It takes about 5 mins for the machine to boot up each time I switch it on.Are you using SpyBot SD , AdAware SE and SpywareBlaster? I also use CCleaner and EmpTemp to keep the junk files down to a minimum. Did you format to NTFS? XP runs better if you format directly to NTFS and don't ever use FAT32 formatting and especially NEVER convert a volume from FAT32 to NTFS. (Although I was lucky once and got the right NTFS cluster size, as the drive was formatted to 4096 bytes with FAT32, you can get real small 512 byte clusters and this will make the machine as slow as molasses. If the MFT is fragmented, or too small, it will be even worse.) Just to check your drive's cluster size open a DOS window and type: chkdsk , and press Enter. You should see a line which says: "4096 bytes in each allocation unit" Maybe some of your RAM has failed. How much RAM do you have in there, that install time (two days) says that there is probably something wrong there. When was the LAST time you blew the dust out of the cabinet and checked to see if all the fans are running properly? It helps after a couple of years just to pull out the RAM modules and put them back in again just to re-seat them. Maybe get a computer shop to test them for you or run DocMemory on them from a DocMemory bootdiskette.this may or may not apply to you but>http://www.windowsreinstall.com/install/oem/hppavilion/hp_pavilion_xppc.htm try holding down the f8 key on boot and chose the last good config....if the above fails....the loop maybe caused by a corupt/driver/ registry.....or trojan/worm an online scan can may help>http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.aspSimilar to some Packard-Bells but as far as I know this just quick-formats the drive and you lose all your data. Is there a means of making up a Master CD set, with HP as there is with Packard-Bell and then recovering the hidden sector for use as part of the hard-drive. When you make the three Master CDs with a Packard-bell system you find that the hidden sector is revealed. (There is another hidden sector, btw which contains OEM info which is placed by the PB tattooing process.) This Master CD hidden sector appears as drive D: and is labelled "Restdone" . When you next do a clean install you need to delete this partition with fdisk and delete the primary DOS drive and re-partition as the Restdone drive D: is not stable and you'll end up with one drive C: if you just go ahead and restore the single drive. When I made up these Master CDs on an iMedia machine with XP, I was then able to partition the drive format all partitions and use the Master CDs to install XP Home and Packard-Bell's Smart-Restore only, so that I could apply SP2 from a Free SP2 CD. After adding firewall and AV updating and scanning I could te-hen update the operating system, add any Packard-Bell software that was still usable (and needed) and then image the drive (an 81982Mb drive C:) making three more CDRs to use to do a full install. Does anyone have experience of HP and being able to do this at all?

Answer»

i picked up a trojan horse virus and my anti virus couldn't get shot of it so I reformatted my drive and now I have big problems. My machine is RUNNING so slow it took 2 days to install MS XP back onto the hard drive despite a message saying it would take 39 minutes. I can't get a firewall or some anti virus software to install it all keeps failing and I am not sure what to try now. Do I need a new hard drive a new CPU or a new system altogether. Every time the machine boots up it keeps telling me the CPU has changed - it hasn't - it's still a P4 but I am now ready to slash my wrists or at least throw the machine through the window, can any one help??? what the make of the hard drive... type msinfo32 in the run box to find out...did you disconnect the pc from the net when you re-installed winxp...did you use recovery disks... do you meean it states that its updating system files or words to that affect.....Well, when it says that you computer has "changed", then it's probably a trojan messing with your startup files..... If you can get on the internet, see if you can get a virus scan.....

[glb]Flame[/glb] Quote

i picked up a trojan horse virus and my anti virus couldn't get shot of it so I reformatted my drive and now I have big problems. My machine is running so slow it took 2 days to install MS XP back onto the hard drive despite a message saying it would take 39 minutes. I can't get a firewall or some anti virus software to install it all keeps failing and I am not sure what to try now. Do I need a new hard drive a new CPU or a new system altogether. Every time the machine boots up it keeps telling me the CPU has changed - it hasn't - it's still a P4 but I am now ready to slash my wrists or at least throw the machine through the window, can any one help???

You really need to start over Rosy. What is the make of your computer and do you have an original XP CD or is it an OEM installation?

If you do have an original XP CD and you have a friend with a computer and a good CD Burning program you should use their machine first of all to make yourself a nex XPSP2 CD by using AutoStreamer 1·0 (freeware) before attempting to clean install.

If you download AutoStreamer to a WORKING computer and also download the 266Mb SP2 file from the Microsoft Download site, start AutoStreamer and put your XP CD in the CD-ROM drive. AutoStreamer will identify your XP CD and then ask you to point to the downloaded SP2 file.

It will take about 25 minutes to merge the core files from your XP CD together with the updated SP2 files and will produce an .ISO file from which you make a NEW XP CD which has Service Pack 2 integrated into it.

You need a good quality CDR (DON'T use a CD-RW!) and you'll need to choose to burn a CD-ROM (ISO) in the burning program.

This new CD will be bootable just like your XP CD and you should see all the folders and files on it just like your XP CD, so the idea is NOT to - copy - the .ISO file to a CD you MUST choose to burn a CD-ROM (ISO)

Sorry to holler at you but it is a common mistake that folks make.

Take another CDR with you and download and then burn to the CDR these programs, AVG Free Edition anti-virus, (You'll need to use that coputer's email to get the activation code for AVG) Zone Alarm Free Firewall, SpyBot SD, AdAware SE and SpywareBlaster. (No activation codes NEEDED for any of these programs.)

NOW you should be able to start over wxith a clean installation.

SO boot to the newly burned XPSP2 CD and choose to delete all old partitions.

Then make a new 8192Mb drive C: to install XP to.

You can make up to three further Logical drives if you want to.

E.G. I have an 80Gb drive which has 80,000,000,000, Bytes (This is known as the decimal size.)

To get the Binary sizes you have to divide by 1024 three time to get:

78125000,Kb , 76293,95,Mb & 74,51,Gb

I use a 8192Mb drive C: for the operating system and all programs. (Exactly 8·0Gb)

A 8192Mb drive D: for the My Documents folder.

A 3072,Mb drive E: for Email and the rest as an archive drive and for all my music files. (Exactly 3·0Gb)

When you have formatted your new drives with NTFS, you can begin installing but ENSURE that your computer is NOT connected to the internet until the installation is complete.

Formatting DIRECTLY to NTFS makes sure that you get optimised cluster sizes of 4096 bytes per allocation unit. It also should produce unfragmented Master File Tables and both of these factors will make your computer run better (faster) as will sufficient physical RAM. 1024Mb is a good figure for XP as it means that your system will rarely use the paging file and as RAM is faster than using the paging file your system will become much more responsive.

For user passwords I only ever use - user - and this gives me the title of Administrator for this computer. (XP Professional.)

When you have re-installed XP you should then install AVG anti-virus and Zone Alarm firewall BEFORE you go on-line.

When you do go on-line UPDATE the AVG anti-virus program FIRST of all, go OFF-LINE and run a full scan.

Then install SpyBot SD , AdAware SE and SpywareBlaster , update them all and run scans with SpyBot & AdAware BEFORE you do any more installing.

If the system comes up clean then fully update the XP Operating System.

When all is well you can add all your other programs, and when everything is running perfectly I would advise you to use a drive imaging program, such as TeraByte Unlimited's Image for DOS, to make a drive image of drive C: burned to good quality CDRs to use in future to be able to do a FULL recovery if you have any problems in future.

Your data should remain safe on drives D: , E: & F:

Using the new XPSP2 CD will give you a much cleaner installation and means that you have for less updating to do. Your systrem should be trouble free if you maintain your security and scan regularly for Trojans as these are what start the problems on your system drive, often attracting and allowing viruses to enter your system.

If you use Diskeeper 9 Professional which can be used with both XP Home and Professional editions, you can defragment the paging file AND the Master File Tables (MFTs) and you can also use Frag-Shield which comes with DK9 to ensure that the MFTs are the right size so as to prevent fragmentation, all of which helps to keep your system running smoothly. Quote

what the make of the hard drive... type msinfo32 in the run box to find out...did you disconnect the pc from the net when you re-installed winxp...did you use recovery disks...<Every time the machine boots up it keeps telling me the CPU has changed > do you meean it states that its updating system files or words to that affect.....

It's a HP hard drive and yes I was disconnected from the net. I used the XP disc to try to reinstall it but the disc got stuck in a loop and it wouldn't install so I downloaded the 6 recovery discs from the MS website and I used this before I used the XP disc again. It is working OK but it is running so slow. It takes about 5 mins for the machine to boot up each time I switch it on.Are you using SpyBot SD , AdAware SE and SpywareBlaster? I also use CCleaner and EmpTemp to keep the junk files down to a minimum.

Did you format to NTFS? XP runs better if you format directly to NTFS and don't ever use FAT32 formatting and especially NEVER convert a volume from FAT32 to NTFS.

(Although I was lucky once and got the right NTFS cluster size, as the drive was formatted to 4096 bytes with FAT32, you can get real small 512 byte clusters and this will make the machine as slow as molasses. If the MFT is fragmented, or too small, it will be even worse.)

Just to check your drive's cluster size open a DOS window and type: chkdsk , and press Enter. You should see a line which says:

"4096 bytes in each allocation unit"

Maybe some of your RAM has failed. How much RAM do you have in there, that install time (two days) says that there is probably something wrong there.

When was the LAST time you blew the dust out of the cabinet and checked to see if all the fans are running properly?

It helps after a couple of years just to pull out the RAM modules and put them back in again just to re-seat them.

Maybe get a computer shop to test them for you or run DocMemory on them from a DocMemory bootdiskette.this may or may not apply to you but>http://www.windowsreinstall.com/install/oem/hppavilion/hp_pavilion_xppc.htm

try holding down the f8 key on boot and chose the last good config....if the above fails....the loop maybe caused by a corupt/driver/ registry.....or trojan/worm an online scan can may help>http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.aspSimilar to some Packard-Bells but as far as I know this just quick-formats the drive and you lose all your data.

Is there a means of making up a Master CD set, with HP as there is with Packard-Bell and then recovering the hidden sector for use as part of the hard-drive.

When you make the three Master CDs with a Packard-bell system you find that the hidden sector is revealed. (There is another hidden sector, btw which contains OEM info which is placed by the PB tattooing process.)

This Master CD hidden sector appears as drive D: and is labelled "Restdone" .

When you next do a clean install you need to delete this partition with fdisk and delete the primary DOS drive and re-partition as the Restdone drive D: is not stable and you'll end up with one drive C: if you just go ahead and restore the single drive.

When I made up these Master CDs on an iMedia machine with XP, I was then able to partition the drive format all partitions and use the Master CDs to install XP Home and Packard-Bell's Smart-Restore only, so that I could apply SP2 from a Free SP2 CD.

After adding firewall and AV updating and scanning I could te-hen update the operating system, add any Packard-Bell software that was still usable (and needed) and then image the drive (an 81982Mb drive C:) making three more CDRs to use to do a full install.

Does anyone have experience of HP and being able to do this at all?

Solve : Why is my computer running so slow?????

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