Fixing
a slow computer can be a slow job
By Peter Vogel
Fixing a slow computer can be a slow job
Recently some friends asked me if I might take a look at one of
their two computers, as it was running rather slowly. You never know
what you are going to encounter in one of these situations, but from
my perspective at least there is always something to be learned.
Not really knowing much about the nature of the problem ahead of
time I simply said I'd be happy to take a look. Little did I realize
that it would be almost an hour before I'd even begun to make any
progress. Slow is one thing, but when it takes more than 10 minutes
to get any response from a mouse or keyboard action you've really
got a problem.
A typical plan of attack in this sort of situation, at least one
that's worked for me, is to get into the Windows Task Manager and
check out the various processes running on the machine. Problem was
I couldn't even get the Task Manager running.
In this case I was dealing with a machine that was several years
old, a Pentium 3 operating at 1.3 GHz with 256 megs of RAM and
running Windows XP. A generally serviceable machine that could
probably benefit from additional RAM, and elimination of any
high-overhead utility programs that might be responsible for the
excessive slowdown.
A reboot into safe mode at least got me going to a point where I
could bring up the Control Panel and get a look at the list of
installed programs. My plan was to eliminate anything not absolutely
necessary. In this case that involved quite a few games installed by
one of my friends' children. I also removed various Internet browser
toolbars.
I next installed a fresh copy of my favourite free registry cleaner,
CCleaner. I carry a number of utility programs with me on a USB
drive. On this machine there was no chance of downloading such
material from the Internet. An initial run brought up several
hundred superfluous entries; these were summarily deleted. CCleaner
makes a backup of the registry in case a roll-back is needed.
I ran CCleaner many times until it no longer found any useless
registry entries.
At this stage the machine wasn't much better, but at least I was
making progress. I asked my friends if they could pinpoint an event
that might have been responsible for the drastic slowdown. I was
already suspecting an antivirus product when they indicated that the
machine began to perform poorly "around the time" when they
installed the Norton Internet Security (NIS) suite.
I decided I was going to remove NIS, but I would first try adding
some additional RAM. Unfortunately, I had only 128 meg sticks with
me, and, as it turned out, this computer had but two memory slots,
already occupied by a similar pair. In other words, short of
spending hard cash to double the memory, I'd have to focus on
installed software.
The Norton suite had to go, but while the case was open I took the
occasion to vacuum a thick layer of dust from the CPU and the system
board.
NIS took almost 20 minutes to uninstall from the machine. I ran
CCleaner once more and presto, a once again responsive machine.
Internet Explorer loaded in about 10 seconds, basic sites loaded in
a couple of seconds, and file download tests showed the sorts of
numbers to be expected with the broadband connection in the house.
Now that the machine was usable I conducted another batch of
uninstalls to remove applications the owners either didn't recognize
or no longer needed. The Task Manager was now running properly, and
I could see that the system resources weren't over-taxed.
As part of their Telus ISP package the owners had some sort of
protection application package in place. Nevertheless, I reactivated
the Windows firewall and then installed the free version of AVG
Antivirus (the top download by far in recent weeks at
www.download.com).
NIS had apparently done its job, as the system was "clean." On the
other hand, the machine had become so slow that it was essentially
sitting there unused.
Three hours after arriving I turned the machine back over to its
owners. It was once again fully usable.
Don't get me wrong here; I'm not specifically singling out the
Norton product as being a bad one. My school's network is well
protected by Symantec Antivirus, a closely related product.
However, all too often when I'm asked about a slow home computer the
problem turns out to be an antivirus or security product that is
using the available system resources in an overly aggressive manner.
Worth a look
Suggestions and comments about this column may be sent to
peterv@portal.ca.
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