WindowsXP running very slow

[cnodadmo]

I want to reintall windowsXP because I don't think my system is still clean after getting rid of a Downloader Virus. Unfortunately, it's hard for me to do this because once windowsXP has fully booted it becomes very slow and to the point where I click on Start and it takes forever for the menus to show up. This will be my first time to reinstall XP and I was wondering if I just put the cd in the drive and hit the reset button and boot from the cdrom drive first or is the only way to reintall it is by running the program from the cdrom when XP has fully booted?

Also, I just want to make sure that having my PC in my car's trunk for a day would not have caused any damage to the internal components?

 

[White Widow]

If you don't mind losing everything on your hard drive, then you can just boto from thr WinXP CD, reformat the drive, and reinstall XP. Have you tried booting into Safe Mode to see if that fixes the problem? If so, at least you would have an environment from which to backup any important material. If putting your PC int he trunk had caused any damage, it would very inlikely that it would manifest itself like this. Have you opened the Windows Task managed (CTRL-ALT-DEL) and looked to see what task is hogging all the CPU?

 

[jackschmittusa]

Usually the only problem with putting a pc in a car is cards coming loose. I would recommend booting from the cd and doing a clean install. It's the only sure way to fix the problem. You already backup regularly don't you? (Two kinds of people - those who backup and those who wish they did.)

 

[LTC8K6]

Check to see if your hard disk controllers have dropped down to PIO mode first.

 

[ianbergman]

For very slow PCs, I almost always look to spyware/viruses first. You said you cleaned out the Downloader virus, but do you have a) updated virus applications running, and b) a good, current spyware scanner?

I would recommend downloading and running the following, in this order: (assuming you can get through the slowness to use the 'net)
Stinger antivirus -- this is just a quick, free virus scanner for the most common ones out there these days -- http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/
Spybot Search and Destroy -- great, free spyware scanner. make sure you use the built-in update feature before running it -- http://security.kolla.de/
AutoStart Viewer -- shows everything starting with your system, so you can identify what doesn't belong. It's a good idea to have another computer, or your computer, with a google window open so you can look up entries you don't recognize, which will probably be most of them. Be careful removing auto-starting programs though, unless you know they are bad. -- http://diamondcs.com.au/downloads/asviewer.zip

g'luck! If you do have to reinstall, a clean format is the only thing that will help you, but remember this will result in all of your data being lost. As has been mentioned, you have to boot from the WinXP CD-ROM, and reformat the drive (you'll see the appropriate option).

 

[L1FE]

Addressing your main question, as long as you put the cd-rom drive as the first boot device (or rather before the harddrive) you can do whatever install of XP you want that you could have done if you had installed from Windows. I would recommend doing a clean install also since that really gets rid of all the junk accumulated over your previous install. Nothing like a nice, newly formatted harddrive to speed things up 😉