System slowdown

I'm looking for some suggestions.

I have just rebuilt my system, new motherboard, new cpu, memory, hard drives, etc. I did a complete fresh install of XP as well, reinstalled all my apps. For a while, the system was smoking fast, boot up took less than a minute from power on to full desktop. Opening apps took only seconds. In the last couple weeks however, it has slowed down tremendously, boot up can take upwards of 5 minutes or more, opening apps takes a couple minutes or more, during all this time the hard drive activity is through the roof.

Here are the system specs;
MSI K9A2-CF mboard
AMD AM2 Athlon 64 6400+ cpu
3 Gig of DDR2 memory
2 Western Digital 500 Gig SATA hard drives;
1st drive, two partitions, C: - 100 Gig, D: - rest of drive
2nd drive, full 500 Gig for backups
2 Lite-on IDE Litescribe 20x DVD burners
Windows XP Pro/SP2

What I have done so far:

Ran virus checks with AVG, ran spyware scans with AVG Antispyware, Adaware, Spybot, ZoneAlarm. All were clean.

Ran Western Digitals Lifeguard Tools hard drive tests, both quick and extended, no problems found.

Defragged the Boot partition.

Ran tests at PCPitStop. Their only real recommendation was to reduce the System Restore point sizes, which I have done. Did a fragmentation analysis again and it said that a defrag was not neede.

I checked the startup list and nothing seems unusual there either.

The only thing I have done in the last couple weeks is install a couple games, Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30 and Doom 3.


Not sure what else to do at this point, so I'm looking for some suggestions on what to check or do. Something has definitely slowed this thing down. Any suggestions would be welcome.

 

Hi Bill

It may be a process running or the disk activity or a combo of both.

While you have the disk activity run taskmgr and look for any program that is consuming CPU. It may not be the cause directly but it may be causing the disk activity.

The program causing the disk access may not be consuming much CPU.

So!

If you don't see an obvious one then begin ending processes rt click and use End Process Tree.

Watch for the disk activity to stop each time you end a process. Report that process back here if you find one.

Lets look at your startups
http://www.tombraiderhub.com/download/ardiag.exe
when run give it a couple minutes it will produce a text file post the contents back here.

Bill here are 3 programs that can help.

Startup Control http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

EnditAll http://www.the-old-sea-dog.net/enditall/endital.zip
lets you end all but needed system files.

KillProcess http://orangelampsoftware.com/downloads/KillProcessSetup.exe
Use its Killlist for XP.

Now for additional items

In services stop and disable all of the below will help some.
DNS Client
Fast User switching
Indexing service
Messenger
Net logon
Net.TCP Port Sharing
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
IPsec services
QoS RSVP
Remote Registry
Universal Plug and play
Web Client
Windows media player Network Sharing

These items can be restarted later if you want but likely you need none of them. And not having them will give a performance boost!

Mike

 

Mike & Evan,

I ran ATF cleaner prior to the defrag to help cleanup the disk, as well as disk cleanup, and reduced the system restore percentage.

I think this is something that hard drive activity related, when I bring up task manager after trying to open an app and the hard drive light is on solid, the cpu is practically idle and what little activity there is system idle process is using that 98%.

I'm attaching the text report from Ardiag. So far no luck with ending processes while the activity is going on, will keep trying that. Thought I would post back with this much for now.

Thanks for the responses, I will look at the other suggestions you've made as well.

 

Sorry, forgot to attach the text file.

 

Hi Bill

OK here may be your problems. These are startups that have files missing.

Sometimes windows can go off on a tangent looking for these files hence disk activity.

All items between the lines are MSI motherboard files that are trying to run from D: Likely your CD.
-------------------------------------------
Program:
N/A
Publisher:
N/A
Entry path:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services
Entry name:
GMSIPCI
Program path & name:
File not found: D:\INSTALL\GMSIPCI.SYS "
Enabled: [V]

Program:
N/A
Publisher:
N/A
Entry path:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services
Entry name:
MSICPL
Program path & name:
File not found: D:\install4\MSICPL.sys "
Enabled: [V]

Program:
N/A
Publisher:
N/A
Entry path:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services
Entry name:
NTACCESS
Program path & name:
File not found: D:\NTACCESS.sys "
Enabled: [V]

Program:
N/A
Publisher:
N/A
Entry path:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services
Entry name:
SetupNTGLM7X
Program path & name:
File not found: D:\NTGLM7X.sys "
Enabled: [V]
----------------------------------------------


The one below is just a dud note the Entry name: the next line is the name of the program, this entry is named 0
====================================
Program:
N/A
Publisher:
N/A
Entry path:
HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\Components
Entry name:
0
Program path & name:
File not found: about:Home "
Enabled: [V]
=====================================

Program:
N/A
Publisher:
N/A
Entry path:
C:\Documents and Settings\Bill\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
Entry name:
Shadow Ops_ Red Mercury Registration.lnk
Program path & name:
File not found: C:\Documents and Settings\Bill\Local Settings\Temp\{E5E357E9-0F3D-47B3-B8FD-DDC86FD83FC9}\{021CB753-D388-4C3B-8E40-554E226F54F2}\ATR1.EXE "
Enabled: [V]

Program:
N/A
Publisher:
N/A
Entry path:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions\Approved
Entry name:
Display Panning CPL Extension
Program path & name:
File not found: deskpan.dll "
Enabled: [V]


---------Power DVD Remote control is useless
Program:
"PowerDVD RC Service "
Publisher:
"(Not verified) Cyberlink Corp. "
Entry path:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Entry name:
RemoteControl
Program path & name:
"c:\program files\cyberlink\powerdvd\pdvdserv.exe "
Enabled: [V]

You need to get rid of all of these.

Download Autoruns http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/Autoruns.zip

Find all I have listed above delete them and reboot see if that fixes your problem.

Mike

 

Mike,

I deleted everything you indicated, no luck, hard drive activity is still through the roof and slowing everything down. It took almost 45 seconds just to open IE to make this post.

 

Bill Boot to Safe mode and see if it does it!

Then boot to Safe mode networking and see if it does it

Did you stop all the Services I reccomended?

Get back tonight if possibe as I will not be available for the next few days.

Mike

 

Mike,

Sorry to take so long to post back, it was a busy weekend.

I booted to Safe mode and Safe mode with networking, both seemed to be fine, bootup was fairly quick, apps opened quickly.

I did stop and disable the following services;

Fast User switching
Indexing service
Messenger
Net logon
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
QoS RSVP
Remote Registry

I did not see the following ones;

Net.TCP Port Sharing
Windows media player Network Sharing

These I've been trying to find out more about before stopping them;

DNS Client
IPsec services
Universal Plug and play
Web Client

This is really driving me crazy. On a cold boot, it is really slow. On a restart, it is slow but not as slow as from a cold boot. After either boot, all apps are very slow to start with the hard drive going nuts. I've been trying to monitor task manager to see if there is significant cpu use during this time, but most of the time cpu use is very low.

 

Hi Bill

I thought it would be OK in Safe mode networking!

What I am asking you to do is not permanent or unistalling anything!

No worry on the services you are not getting rid of them permanently all you have to do is reenable them to get them back.

Disable the rest and reboot!

The DNS Client is known to cause long boot up under certain conditions and just may solve that issue.

After you stop and disable the rest reboot and get back.

I am just sittng here at a Clients waiting on a Fedex delivery so now is a good time.

Mike

 

Ok, all the services in the list except the two that were not found have been stopped and disabled. No difference on boot or application start.

I've been looking on the net for a hard drive monitoring tool of some kind that might give me some indication either real time or by logging of what's eating the hard drive. Do you have any ideas on something like that? I've found a few tools at Snapfiles but not sure how good they are going to be.

 

The fact that it does not do it in Safe mode indicates it is something on your computer.

Before you do the below humor me and Turn OFF Zonealarm and reboot. If that fixes it get back.

Else continue below.

Lets try a Shotgun fix.

Download Dial-A-Fix (DAF)
http://wiki.djlizard.net/Dial-a-fix#Mirrors.2Fdownload_locations.2C_and_articles

Check all boxes on the screen (clear any restrictions if it shows any)
Then click GO!

Reboot retest!

Get back to us.

Mike

 

I think you're on to something here, without ZA, the system boot time is back to normal, apps open without delay. I did a warm boot and a cold boot, both were a lot better without ZA. I wonder if it has applied an update that slowed things down over the last couple weeks?

 

Yeah! Figures!

Ok turn on the windows firewall until you get this resolved.

You should at least uninstall ZA then reinstall it clean.

See
http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=73186&highlight=zone+alarm

Especially my post about completely cleaning up the Zone alarm that ZA does not get.

Also you might look at COMODO. It is what I use.

Mike

 

Bill the cleanup in that thread is to be used after uninstalling ZA.

Do not do it first!

Mike

 

I've been thinking about dumping ZA in favor of Comodo for a while now, I put Comodo on my wife's laptop with Vista and it seems to be working fine, not having any problems like this. I paid a visit to the ZA forums too, it seems that I'm not the only one having this problem, some have fixed it with a clean uninstall/re-install, some have fixed it by applying an update clean in lieu of importing current settings.

I think it's time to move to Comodo, I still have a little over 6 mos. on my ZA subscription, but I can't live with a problem like this cropping up from time to time, it's driven me nuts for well over two weeks now.

I downloaded CCcleaner also. I'll follow your uninstall instructions (also found pretty much the same thing in the ZA forum) and cleanup, then put on Comodo.

Thanks for the help Mike, now that I know how to fix it, I feel a lot better.

BTW, in case anyone else has this problem, I updated my ZA Pro to V7.0.470.000 and that's what seemed to cause the misery. Apparently, if I had opted not to import the current settings during the update, it would have probably been ok.

 

Hey Bill! If you still have Zone Alarm, check something for me, please. Re-enable Zone Alarm to start with Windows, then stop and disable the service Shell Hardware Detection. Reboot and see if the behavior persists.

 

Hi Dave,

Yep, I still have it, was going to do the uninstall/install tomorrow night.

I stopped that service and disabled it, did a warm boot and a complete power off and boot. The boot time so far seems to be back to normal, however, some apps are still taking longer than usual to load, like winzip, irfanview, nero, foxit reader, turbo tax, while some other apps that were taking a long time to open like Outlook Express, IE are opening normally again.

Not sure what this means, seems to be some better but not back to normal.

 

Well, in what turned out to be a very long topic, it was uncovered that Zone Alarm has changed the group of services that it's vsmon (True Vector) service loads with (and added another child process), thereby affecting many of the things that load after it (read - causing things to hang, itself included). I explained it in part, best I could, here. In that topic we ultimately changed the load order of some service groups, which resulted in a normal boot time. Unless you're compelled to use up what you paid for till it's gone, I'd recommend proceeding with the uninstall and replace it with something else. I was just curious to see if disabling that service circumvented the problem, indicating they have done nothing to fix the problem.

 

Dave,

I would never have suspected ZA to be the problem, although it doesn't surprise me. They've created problems like this in the past and not done anything about it for quite some time, leaving their users to fend for themselves. I started not to renew my subscription, but at the time didn't have the time to look for an alternative. Since Comodo has been working great on the Vista machine, I'd planned to move to it soon, this has just increased the urgency for the move. It's worth the money loss to get my machine running normally again. The difference between what it should be like and what it is now is incredible, a boot of less than a minute has gone to a boot of 5 minutes or more sometimes, opening apps sometimes takes upwards of 2 minutes or more, very frustrating.

Should I reset that service that you had me stop?