All loading times have slowed - Help!

[shadow82]

Hey all,
I am running sort of an old system but it has been doing fine for what I am using it for atm. I think it has a Athlon 1.16 ghz processor and 512 megs of pc 2700 crucial ram. I am running Windows XP. I built this a few years ago when alot of these parts were fairly high end and I really have not run into anything i couldnt figure out.

Today my computer really started to slow down. The win xp loading screen with the green bar takes forever now..it used to be a couple seconds. Scandisk goes extremely slow -- a few seconds per percent. When on the desktop programs load up much slower and web pages are quite a bit slower too. Sometimes the mouse will jump around the screen. In online games my lag meter will jump around constantly. (I am connected to a college network)

I have updated and run ad-aware and spybot. Both these keep turning up spyware programs. I also updated and ran AVG-free edition which came up with quite a few problems which supposedly i fixed. It doesnt come up with anything now; but asaware and spybot continually turn up the same programs. My guess is some virus is using up massive amounts of my systems power but who knows..i have been out of the loop for a while. Please help if you can..thanks

 

[mehmetmunur]

Here are some suggestions. I am not a fan of anti-spyware programs, I like to go right to the source.

Control-alt-delete and look at windows task manager, and see if anything aside from the usual stuff eating up CPU time and memory under "Processes". If you see any program out of the ordinary, note the name down and search for the file. You should be able to google most/all the program names you see there.

Start, run, and type msconfig. In the startup and services section, you will see any and all programs that start when your computer starts. By looking at these entries, you will, once again, might see some programs that are out of the ordinary. It is time consuming, but it is better than reformatting your hard-drive. Once you figure out the programs that you have determined to be malware, start with safe mode (F5,or F8 I always forget which one), and delete all of these programs. Then restart a few times and check once again with task manager and msconfig to see if they have come back. If they have, there must be some sort of registry entry that will be a pain in the neck to get rid of, in which case I suggest that you reformat your hard-drive. I am an aspiring hard drive formatter, usually perform one at least once every 6 months, and keep any and all useful information backed up as well on a secondary drive. Saves a lot of headaches in the long run. Windows is a fickle beast.

Before I forget, have you tried system restore?

 

[aatf510]

It looks like a good excuse for a brand new computer.
I retired my AMD Athlon T-bird 1.1GHz + 1GB PC133 + Geforce 3 Ti200 more than three years ago.

 

[Insomniak]

Originally posted by: toattett
It looks like a good excuse for a brand new computer.

 

[shadow82]

Hah i wish i could afford a new computer now..but not for a few months. I did find in the process list csrss.exe which seems to be part of a trojan. Any ideas how to get rid of this? Would end process do?

 

[Diasper]

You should use free online scanners or else other trojan scanners.

Try ewido and a2 as free trojan scanners. However, you could use a trial version of Trojan Hunter / TDS-3 to remove any spyware as they have been consistently reviewed as the best trojan scanners. Trojan Hunter is a somewhat more usewr friendly (less advanced options).

Other anti-spyware stuff.

Windows Anti-sapyware beta
Ad-Aware
Spybot Search and Destroy
Spyware Doctor


I use all of those along with ewido and AVG7 to keep my system clean. Make sure to run live-updates before scanning with all of those.

Preventative you can use SpywareBlaster. Another free anti-virus is AVAST but I didn't like it much (it should also pick up a few Trojans like AVG) because to me it seemed somewhat more bloated and less effective - my feeling. Also Anti-Vir is another option although I don't think it includes a resident protector.

 

[Diasper]

All the advice above is all sound. I'd try and use programs to remove it first after identifying possible problems with msconfig.

Regarding Trojans and my opinion - if I ever had a Trojan on my pc I'd set out to reformat my pc as only that would be good enough for me - I wouldn't feel happy any other way as I do bank accounts and credit card transactions on my pc.


BTW 1.16ghz is plenty for internet and office stuff. Heck, I help maintain a 266mhz and 700mhz pc for family and friends and they are sufficient although the 266mhz does struggle at times despite having more MB of RAM than mhz in speed

 

[mechBgon]

I also favor the Drop The Bomb On It? approach. If you aren't ready to DTBOI then you might take a look at my suggestions for this guy in this thread. You would want to have a router providing firewall protection during that procedure... got router?

Locking down all but the essential ports on the router (53 and 80 for the purpose of malware removal, just DNS and HTTP) would be smart too, keeps the malware from phoning home for updates or instructions using just any old port.

 

[CrispyFried]

Go to the device manager and check under IDE/ATA controllers and select the Primary channel, under Advanced make sure its still set to the highest mode your drive or mobo supports (Ultra DMA 4 or 5 maybe, not a PIO mode).. depending on your setup windows may suddenly drop the mode down on you.

 

[ksuWildcat]

Originally posted by: CrispyFried
Go to the device manager and check under IDE/ATA controllers and select the Primary channel, under Advanced make sure its still set to the highest mode your drive or mobo supports (Ultra DMA 4 or 5 maybe, not a PIO mode).. depending on your setup windows may suddenly drop the mode down on you.

I definitely agree with this. Double-check to make sure that the HD isn't in PIO mode. If you're running in UDMA, then you've got some nasty spyware/trojans. I also agree with the reformat idea. It seems to be the only way to get rid of some spyware components. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

 

[shadow82]

Thanks all..it was starting to get ridiculous so i pulled the old format trick out of the bag and got it over with. I am hinking about picking up a laptop soon and possibly upgrading some stuff on here. Thanks for the help

 

[dhoytw]

Originally posted by: shadow82
Hah i wish i could afford a new computer now..but not for a few months. I did find in the process list csrss.exe which seems to be part of a trojan. Any ideas how to get rid of this? Would end process do?

Dude it's not csrss.exe, that process is a crucial windows service. This process manages most graphical commands in Windows. I don't think this has anything to do with a trojan on your machine. If you are loaded with spyware just redo the machines OS or you could try microsofts antispyware (if you are using xp or 2000).

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: mehmetmunur
Here are some suggestions. I am not a fan of anti-spyware programs, I like to go right to the source.

Control-alt-delete and look at windows task manager, and see if anything aside from the usual stuff eating up CPU time and memory under "Processes". If you see any program out of the ordinary, note the name down and search for the file. You should be able to google most/all the program names you see there.

Start, run, and type msconfig. In the startup and services section, you will see any and all programs that start when your computer starts. By looking at these entries, you will, once again, might see some programs that are out of the ordinary. It is time consuming, but it is better than reformatting your hard-drive. Once you figure out the programs that you have determined to be malware, start with safe mode (F5,or F8 I always forget which one), and delete all of these programs. Then restart a few times and check once again with task manager and msconfig to see if they have come back. If they have, there must be some sort of registry entry that will be a pain in the neck to get rid of, in which case I suggest that you reformat your hard-drive. I am an aspiring hard drive formatter, usually perform one at least once every 6 months, and keep any and all useful information backed up as well on a secondary drive. Saves a lot of headaches in the long run. Windows is a fickle beast.

Before I forget, have you tried system restore?

I guess you've not had a CoolWebSearch (may its authors rot in hell) infection yet. A number of its variants don't show up on the process list. They're loaded into memory sometimes by a randomly named dll file - and there's no trace of this in Task Manager. CWShredder, sometimes combined with some custom hunting techniques, is needed for the worst variants of CWS.

 

[corkyg]

And, controlling XPs Prefetch function can also help speed things up.

PreFetch

 

[dhoytw]

Maybe something else that would help you out, STAY OFF THE PORNO SITE.