Resolved PC running slow, programs running slow

Hi obheron. Since your computer is pretty slow, follow these steps to make the computer run faster:

1. Click Start< Control Panel< Add/Remove Programs and uninstall any programs that you don't use.
2. While in the add/remove programs window click the button that says Add/Remove Windows Components and uncheck the checkboxes next to Indexing Service, MSN Explorer, and Windows Messenger. Then click the Next button. When the wizard finishes click the finish button to close the window. 3. Disable any Windows Services that you don't use by following Black Vipers Services Guide.
4. Download and run ATF Cleaner and select all the checkboxes in the program then hit the empty selected button, ATF Cleaner.
5. Run Disk Cleanup, Click Start< All Programs< Accessories< Sytstem Tools< Disk Cleanup. When its done calculating how much free space you can save make sure you check all the checkboxes except for compress old files on the Disk Cleanup tab. Now click the More Options tab and under System Restore click the cleanup button. When it asks you if you want to delete all but the most recent restore point click Yes. Now click ok on the Disk Cleanup window to allow Disk Cleanup to remove unnecessary files from the computer.
6. Download and run Auslogics Disk Defrag from here.
7. Download and run Quicksys RegDefrag from here.
8. Download and run Autoruns from here. When you open the program click the Logon Tab and remove any programs that you don't need to startup with your computer.
9. Click Start< Right Click My Computer and click Properties. In the System Properties window click the Advanced tab< Under where it says Performance hit the settings button. In the Performance Options window click the Advanced tab and under Virtual Memory click the Change button. In the Virtual Memory window make sure your harddrive is selected and select the option that says System Managed Size and click the Set button. Now click Ok on the Virtual Memory window to close it. Now in the Performance Options window click the Date Execution Prevention tab and select the option that says Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select. After thats done click Ok on all the windows to close them out and reboot the computer.
10. Click Start< Run and type fsutil behavior set disable8dot3 1 and hit enter. After that command has been entered, delete the contents in the Run box and now type fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1 and hit enter. For more information about what these commands do take a look here, NTFS Performance Tweaks.
11. Take a look at these three links to further speed up your computer, Make Windows XP Shut Down Faster, Speed up Windows Start Menu, Automatically end tasks at shutdown.
12. Could you let me know what security programs you have installed and if you have Windows XP Service Pack 3 installed?

Let me know if your computer is any faster after performing the above steps.

Also please enter your System Details. It helps us in answering your questions.

Note: A common error is to forget to show your System Details in your profile:

Make sure to do the above when entering your System Details, thanks.

 

Ok cool. Go ahead and reinstall MSE as soon as possible. You don't want to get the computer reinfected with any nasties. MalwareBytes is fine. Also make sure you have the Windows Firewall enabled.

Keep me posted if you run into any difficulties with the list if items that I am having you perform.

 

Ok. I want to see how many processes are running on your machine to see if anything is slowing the machine down.

Download and run Process Explorer from here. Extract the contents of the folder and then run the program. After it opens see if you can pinpoint any processes that you don't need running and find out which ones are taking up most of the CPU usage.

After you have monitored the processes in Process Explorer click File< Save As and save the ProcessXP text file to your desktop.

Open the text file and copy and paste the results here in your next reply with the number of processes the computer is running.

 

Ok, great. I have highlighted the processes that I believe you can disable.

ati2evxx.exe 804 556 K 2,468 K ATI External Event Utility EXE Module ATI Technologies Inc.

PRISMXL.SYS 1768 460 K 1,896 K PrismXL Service New Boundary Technologies, Inc.

CALMAIN.exe 140 1,060 K 2,980 K Canon Camera Access Library 8 Canon Inc.

ati2evxx.exe 1872 520 K 2,480 K ATI External Event Utility EXE Module ATI Technologies Inc.

shwiconEM.exe 768 748 K 2,900 K Alcor Micro, Corp.

atidtct.exe 1424 864 K 3,276 K ATI Device Detection Application ATI Technologies Inc.

ATIRW.EXE 888 2,756 K 6,624 K ATI Remote Wonder ATI Technologies Inc.


1. Do you use any of the ATI features for your graphics card? All of those process you don't need running since you can change your graphics options without any problems with those processes disabled. If you want to disable the ATI processes click Start< Run and type services.msc and hit enter. Find any service that has the words ATI in the name, right click the service, click properties, and under Startup type set it to Disabled.

2. In the services window set the CALMAIN serivce to Manual since you have a camera that you use. That process doesn't need to be set to Automatic.

3. For the prismxl.sys process take a look here. It is also listed as a service so if you don't need it you can disable that as well.

4. For the shwiconEM.exe process do you use a card reader? If you don't use it then you can also disable that process using the Autoruns program that I had you download in my first post.

5. For the CurseClient.exe process do you know what that is?

6. The WUAUCLT.exe process is for Windows Updates so I wouldn't mess with that process.

7. I assume you also went through Black Vipers Services Guide and disabled any system services that you didn't need running correct? I didn't mention any system processes that you can disable because everyone uses their system differently and I don't know what Windows Features you want disabled or enabled so I am leaving those services up to you to decide.

 

Process Explorer only terminates the process temporarily. If you terminate the processes using Process Explorer then they will reappear the next time the computer reboots. To actually disable the processes mentioned above you have to disable the process using the Services.msc window or by deleting the startup entry in the Autoruns program.

 

Ok. For the services guide if you looked at the site you will notice that there are 3 configuration options for the users. Safe, Tweaked and Bare Bones.

Go ahead and follow the instructions for the Safe category and disable all of the services in that category only, except for the Smart Card service which is needed for your card reader. The rest of those services under the safe configuration can be disabled with little or no side effects. Remember you can access the services window by clicking Start< Run and typing services.msc in the run box and hitting enter to launch the services window.

If you do happen to notice a minor issue you can simply restore those services to their default state.

For the ATI software take a look at the startup items using the Autoruns program that is listed in my first post. When you click on the Logon Tab in the Autoruns program look for any ATI software that is listed. If you find an ATI entry you can either uncheck its checkbox which stops it from starting up or you can delete the entry permanently.

 

Thanks for the update

 

Thanks for letting me know.