When she does get the system running, use the Processes tab of Task
Manager
(From CTRL+ALT+DEL) to see what is running
She will need to add to the columns so she can see:
Disk IO - I/O Write Bytes, I/O read Bytes, I/O Other
Memory - Memory Usage, VM Size, Memory Delta, PF Delta, Page Faults
If she has installed Norton Ghost - that could be the culprit,
also - check Norton Options, Autoprotect - is using smartscan
And - if you have Norton Firewall, then ensure that the Windows one is
disabled
And. is liveupdate set to auto - if so then part of the startup is to get
any available/required fixes over the internet
That's just for a starter before you try booting in safe mode and
seeing if that works a lot faster
as well as running Trojan and virus scans
If there is sufficient space, I'd suggest setting a permanent pagefile
with
the min pagefile size at 700Mb
Oh! and check that the drive is being accessed in DMA mode
As Wayne says - there's lots of things that could cause the problem
starting with malware, going on to hard drive problems
lack of space on the hard drive for a paging file - which will be needed
if
you only have 256Mb memory - and possibly even less for windows if the
system is using 32Mb of it for the video controller
Mostly, I'd suggest that you should make sure you have adequate backups
(multiple copies) of the 'personal' data on the system.
Depending on what's wrong, a cure may require the system to be
re-installed
do you have the CD/DVD's and details of userid's with their passwords to
reinstall the OS
and regain access to your email web and the files held under your
userprofile - My Documents, Desktop etc.
Panic now - it will give you a head start over any panic that you attempt
after the system gives up!
JimB
----- Original Message -----
From: "Wayne Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, November 12, 2006 3:06 PM
Subject: Re: PC runs very, very slow
At 11:58 AM 11/11/2006, Robert Blakely typed:
>Does this ring any bells? Is there anything that I could explore
>from here that might help locate the problem? Do you have a
>suggestion of a no cost check program that might be used to
>analyze? It almost seems that the CPU is just running slow for no
>reason. It's gotta be a software screwup. It's just gotta be!
It could be but with only 256meg of ram it doesn't have to be a
software screwup but rather just loading a few too many things on
startup will bog it down.
You say she has Symantec. Is this NAV ? You also state you have no
idea whether it's up to date or not. Some one NEEDS to know whether
it's up to date or not. The wife says it takes up to an hour to
startup. Does that mean into Windows or before she sees any text on the
screen?
Sorry but there are just so many things it could be. You say it's a
Dell. Doesn't she have the DDD [Dell Diagnostic Disk]? It could be
the PS or the HD or the files on the HD or the mombo itself.
