Why does my 'high-spec' laptop run so slow?

[Rwalls]

Hey everyone, I need some help here.

2 weeks ago, I reformatted my harddisk and reinstalled windows xphome. After that, I put on a few pieces of software. - Norton Systemworks 2004, Macromedia Studio MX 2004, AOL9 and some other general things. However, things seem to be running quite sluggish. For example, clicking on the start-menu..usually the program menu was displayed instantly..now there is maybe a 2 second delay..which is quite frustrating. Also, in an image folder..when I switch to thumbnail views, it takes MUCH longer than it used to when loading them all. Other general things seem to take longer too such as program startups etc.

I have NORTON GOBACK running instead of windows xp restore, if that's any help.

My laptop has quite high specs, windows xp home, pentium 4 3.0, 80gig hard disk, 1gb ddr, 128mb radion 9600..etc.

I've scanned the system with adaware and spybot as well as norton antivirus and there are no problems coming up with any of them.

Any help will be appreciated.

[edrod13]

One of your installed programs could be slowing your machine down. What you could do is go into MSCONFIG and see if you can disable one of the programs to find the culprit. When you disable one of the items you will see that selective startup will be ticked, since you have no idea which one could be the problem just try one at a time. I personnally would start with Go back or AOL as the others in My opinion seem ok.

about two weeks ago my neighbors desktop was running very slow. I went into MSCONFIG and disabled all of the MCAFEE entries and it was back to normal.

[Force Flow]

Norton Systemworks is a big resource hog. I suggest getting rid of it.

You should probably run adaware and spybot. Chances are, your system is full of spyware running in the background.

[andyms18a]

go to control panel then system on the hardware tab select device manager look for ide controlers expand them and select primary right click and chose properties then advanced make shore it sayes DMA if available hit apply then check the secondery controlar as well

[Rwalls]

Hey again,

I run adaware and spybot on a daily basis and each update it everytime there is a new update for each. They show up no spyware on the computer.

And all of the IDE settings say 'DMA if available'.

As far as systemworks go, I really only have it for NortonAntivirus. I know for sure it is running quite a few systems on startup, but the problem is, I don't know which it is safe to turn off. I don't want to leave the computer in a way that it is easily infected. Can anyone help me out on what I should disable? I have zonealarm security suite on my computer, but have the antivirus deactivated. Would it be better to simply remove norton and use the whole zonealarm suite? I've tended to always use norton in the past however.

[Rwalls]

Hey again, don't worry guys. Problem solved.

I REMOVED ALL the Norton/Symantec products from my computer, and guess what.... everything is running MUCH faster. Menus open immediately...no waiting on startup. I had no idea this program could be using so much resources. Thanks guys

[glc]

Norton 2004 is a HUGE hog.