Help needed please - slow pc

[Miss_Kiss]

I need your help please!!! We've got a HP Compaq Presario SR2129UK:

Core 2 Duo E6300 (C) DC 1.86 GHz 1066 MHz front side bus Socket 775

Intel 945G Chipset

3GB DDR2 Ram

250 GB SATA 3G 7200 rpm

Nvidia 9600GT

400w Corsair

The last 2 were added a month ago. It all worked fine for a few weeks, but now the computer got extremely slow. It works ok for a few moments, and then stops as if 'thinking' for a few moments and so fort.

I have made a recovery from the boot system, ran all kinds of reg cleaner, spyware detector, anti virus, but nothing.

All help is appreciated.

[GavX]

Alot of spyware doesn't work too well, my secret ace is malware bytes, brilliant free app and if its a spyware thing, that'll get em.

Usual things, do a disk clean up, disk defrag, run msconfig (Happy now? ) and disable any programs you don't need in start up (careful what you turn off here).

As far as software goes, hope that helps. It seems to do the business on most slow PCs we deal with. Hardware seems fine so that won't be your bottleneck. Now overclock that PC!

[I Hunta x]

Originally Posted by name='GavX'

run msnconfig

Dont you mean msconfig?

And yeah i cant realy think of anything you havent already done or gav has suggested other than mabey the heatsink has came loose and there is a heat problem? (happened to a few of mine before ) Give real temp/speed fan a try reply with the temps when its being slow.

if once you have tried gavs stuff there is still no improvent then it may be something a little deaper than a virus/spyware/similar

[Miss_Kiss]

Thanks GavX! I'll try that one when I get home.

I've done the disk clean up, disk defrag, didn't dare to mess with msconfig. Is there a list (maybe on the net somewhere) of programs/processes that are crucial to run, so that I can stop the rest?

Also I noticed that there is 1 process (csrss.exe) that runs twice. Could this be the problem?

[GavX]

msconfig, msnconfig... its too early in the morning for that...

The way I do msconfig is check what the apps are and see if I need them.

This lovely college PC will make a fine example:

PnkBstrA can safely get turned off, as its PunkBuster and only needed when I fire up QuakeLive, which of course I would never dream of doing as its a college PC and I certainly didn't set myself as an Admin on my account so I could play games and mess around properly. Honest.

Other things like Nero, uTorrent etc can safely get turned off, but google is your friend, you don't want to disable something like firewalls or antivirus.

Another wee trick is to turn off some of the fancies that XP/Vista has. Right click on my Comp and go to properties (in XP, no Vista at hand). Under advanced and "Performance" you can turn off a few of the visualisations like "Animate Windows when Maximising and Minimising" which is hardly needed.

I have managed to get a crappy 256mb desktop PC running fairly nicely and still looking like XP by playing with msconfig and Performance stuff.

Again, Malware Bytes is win and running that will get rid of any nasties that are still kicking around

[Jim]

Just another thing that might be worth trying. Put your ear right up against the hard disk when the pc freezes. If you hear 'clicking' (as opposed to the usual crunching) your hard disk may be on its way out.

[GavX]

Can you not run a S.M.A.R.T. monitoring tool to see hard drive health?

[VonBlade]

Originally Posted by name='Miss_Kiss'

Also I noticed that there is 1 process (csrss.exe) that runs twice. Could this be the problem?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...6163917AAVSa2T

[Ham]

Un-install all of HP's Bloatware too.

[GavX]

Some of the newer bloatware isn't too bad, but yeah if you have recovery discs incase all goes wrong, just uninstall all the crap. Forgot it was a preinstalled machine good shout