First, sorry as I'm not technical savvy. Need some help. My desktop is 1 year old and already having problems. The computer is taking a long time to start up (example; when I on the computer, the windows XP Professional takes a long time to set up). Also, even normal applications and surfing the web takes longer. I know that the slowness is not due solely to the internet connection. FYI, computer is custom built. Processor is Core 2 Dual 1.86GHz with 2 GB RAM. HDD should be 320 GB. Using Avast antivirus. What is wrong with it? How can I check and correct it? Thanks.
When was the last time you did any maintenance to the machine i.e. defrag, empty caches, etc.? Do a test, turn off the anti-virus and see if that makes a difference. Sure you didn't pick up a virus? Just, My2¢¢
Sounds like your registry may be overburdened and you may have picked up some rogue malware or a virus. Also be careful of running two antivirus programs/firewalls etc. Additionally as mentioned before, defrrag your drive, clear your internet cache and cookies. I use the free editions of AVG antivirus and AVG anti-rootkit to do a checkup. I do not run these full time, I have ZoneAlarm firewall and antivirus running full time.(disabled when using AVG) If you have a bot or malware installed, it might be running its mischief sapping your machine while you use it.
My computer has 2 drives (C & D). C drive, I have done check disk and defragmenting recently and regularly. No problems. However, D drive is another story. D drive: --defragmenting is ok. no problems --check disk. --have never run it as everytime I've tried I ran into problems. [Problem--there is no indication that anything has been completed even after many hours. With c drive, the check disk is automatically done in dos mode(not windows mode) and they will say what % has been completed. With D drive, it seems that the check disk is in windows mode??? And the '% that is completed' is in the form of a horizontal bar. After many many hours nothing is still completed (not even 1%) So how do I go about solving it? Also, the starting up of the computer will solely depend on C drive and not D drive right? As for virus, only have 1 ie Avast antivirus and no problems with virus as far as I know (or at least Avast has not picked up any) Also how do I check whether my registry is overburdened? Thanks
Not sure what is going on with your drive D. Try one of the free registry clean utils like regclean. First remove any applications via control panel of anything you dont need. Then run a registry cleaner. I would download the following free apps Spybot S&D Ad-Aware AVG rootkit detector AVG antivirus (all the free versions) temporarily disable avast and run these tools. The combination of Avast and the above programs statistically should catch 99.5% of all the threats out there. Then enable Avast. In the past when the performance of my XP boxes has degraded, I just wipe the drives and reinstall the OS and apps and start over.