Slow perfomance problems!

[1pyro]

About a week ago my bosses home computer's OS (XP Home) started running really slow. He means a slug. He's not sure of the processor speed but he said he bought it last year from Dell with 1Ghz of memory. (plenty for what he says he does with it.... no gaming) He thinks one of his kids might have downloaded something from the internet called "Precision Time" I'm not familiar with it. I suggested he download Spy-Bot (the good version) and try to clean it up. Any other thoughts on how he can restore some snap to it. He's not ready for shutting down certain services. But with 1Gig of mem I really don't think that's his problem. He's tried defragging.

Suggestions?

Pyro

 

[lobadobadingdong]

go into the bios and make sure the processor isn't set to compatable, that will castrate it's performance. make sure the on-board graphics is using the max mem (most is either 1mb or 8mb) if the option is available set the hard drive to performance instead of default. and make sure DMA is enabled on it, do a windows update, and a virus update and then scan for new virus's (there are a lot of them going around these days that bog down systems)

also: when in windows do a msconfig, and dissable any startup items that aren't necissary.

 

[hamltnblue]

The kid probably got into the bios or changed a setting.
You can go on google and type in the model number of the putr to get the correct bios settings. Mine once switched to 800 mhz from 2.2Gig. Never found out what did it but machine ran slow and hotter.
Good Luck

 

[Slikkster]

Maybe you can use XP's Remote Assistance to see what's going on in his pc yourself. Not the bios, of course, but anything else that's running.

 

[John]

I seriously doubt his kids have tampered with any BIOS settings.

1pyro, my customers check in pc's all the time due to it "running slow". You were correct in your assement that it is infested with spyware/adware. I'd also scan for viruses.

 

[Abhi]

Adaware + SpyBot S&D + An antivirus...

Updated to latest definitions.

 

[Abhi]

Good thread for removing spyware

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=33&threadid=1258310

 

[RadBrad]

Originally posted by: 1pyro
About a week ago my bosses home computer's OS (XP Home) started running really slow. He means a slug. He's not sure of the processor speed but he said he bought it last year from Dell with 1Ghz of memory. (plenty for what he says he does with it.... no gaming) He thinks one of his kids might have downloaded something from the internet called "Precision Time" I'm not familiar with it. I suggested he download Spy-Bot (the good version) and try to clean it up. Any other thoughts on how he can restore some snap to it. He's not ready for shutting down certain services. But with 1Gig of mem I really don't think that's his problem. He's tried defragging.

Suggestions?

Pyro

Yea, go to the control panel and uninstall precision time. Another thing is (1year old,boss,kids,home computer) Give the thing a good physical cleaning, especially the crap in the heatsink.