Slow Loading?

[NewGenSTi]

Well I built this computer a few months back and It was extremely fast when I first booted it. since then it has been getting slower and slower for opening windows and such. the system consists of 1gb geil ram, 3.0 P4 hyperthreading chip, ic7-max 3 mobo, and all the goodies. tons of cooling fans, graphics cards, whole 9 yards. Anyways. I was just wondering if it could maybe be something in the registry messed up causing me to get slow loading windows.. I have checked multiple times for spyware and removed tons, but think there still may be more. I also use this system for video editing and it seems like whenever I need to use windows media player is takes a while to load videos or music? Any ideas? whats teh best spyware removal, and best registry fixes out there?

[HyperTF]

Adaware SE and SpyBot... great tools for this purpose.
Also, try doing the MS salute: CTRL, ALT & DELETE, going to task manager and see what processes are running and see what might be slowing things down. Have you installed a lot of software? Any peer sharing apps like Kazaa? they can choke things up nicely sometimes. You could also go into Computer Management and do some investigation.
Start - Control Panel - Performance and Maintenance - Administrative tools - Computer Management (or you could check out the Performance tool - actually, do this!!).
Also check how much your CPU is using the Page file, if it is excessive check the memory management settings.
justr a few ideas to try. There is more you can do.

[NewGenSTi]

Originally Posted by HyperTF Adaware SE and SpyBot... great tools for this purpose. Also, try doing the MS salute: CTRL, ALT & DELETE, going to task manager and see what processes are running and see what might be slowing things down. Have you installed a lot of software? Any peer sharing apps like Kazaa? they can choke things up nicely sometimes. You could also go into Computer Management and do some investigation. Start - Control Panel - Performance and Maintenance - Administrative tools - Computer Management (or you could check out the Performance tool - actually, do this!!). Also check how much your CPU is using the Page file, if it is excessive check the memory management settings. justr a few ideas to try. There is more you can do.

Actually looking at this now the Page file seems pretty high of I watch that graph. How can I get to the memory management to fool with the settings?

[HyperTF]

What is your idea of high? the thing is it is normal for the page file to be utilised but excessive usage might question available RAM but 1GB should be ample unless you are running some intensive apps. Go to device manager and just double check that it is registering 1GB.
The fact is, the more stuff you install on your PC, the slower it will become with all the extra start up and running processes it has to maintain. How many processes can you see in Task manager and running applications, you may find that half the items in your system tray may not really be of use and can be disabled from startup. One way to check this is go into Start - All Programs - Start up and see what is being run on start up.
Try to do other things before you adjust page file management, by default these settings are pretty sound, but if you want to have a look Start - Control Panel - Performance and Maintenance - System - Advanced tab - Performance section - Settings button - Advanced Tab - Virtual Memory section - Change (as I said, the defaults usually are sound)
Oh and be careful around the registry, you can cripple your system if you change something, in fact I would back up the registry and save a recovery point before you make any significant changes. Just a suggestion.

[NewGenSTi]

yea I have had problems before with the registry. seems that viruses and spyware like to add scripts that just slow everything down. so I knwo the whole routine there already. I went ahead and changed the setting of my allowed memory for page file and it seems to have sped up the computer a tad bit. I am going to take a look at the registry and see if I cant tweak it a little for better performance.. Next stop overclock. lol

[HyperTF]

Umm, OC... that might add to your woes... sheesh, 3GHz is a hefty CPU, I don't know how much a Celeron will take and even your mobo.
Did all your RAM register? Tweak the registry if you have to but do it the right way (using windows tools) not direct. did you kill of some start up apps? I bet there are 4 things at least that could go.
I would say get it stable first, then overclock if you must (i probably wouldn't) I wouldn't use overclocking as a band aid.

[NewGenSTi]

well first off its not a celeron. it is a pentium 4 3.0.. I am sure I can get it close to 3.4.. but I wouldnt be using it as a bandaid. I have cleaned everything out already and its just not as fast as I would like. as far as the slow windows this is def registry/ spyware related. I have figured this much out. I am running a registry utility now to see what comes up. and as far as overclocking goes I build the system with intentions of overclocking but figured I would run it untill I find some apps that it cant handle. I would like a little bit more speed for my video editing. everything else seems to run smooth

[HyperTF]

Oh i saw 3.0C and assumed Celeron, my bad!
Hint: If you are rolling in money, beef up your graphics card he he
Really, Adaware SE is excellent. I haven't looked for registry cleaning tools yet...hrmm

[NewGenSTi]

lol I am rolling in the bills right now. maybe for christmas. but as for now my card does pretty good in the games I play and it holds up decent for video editing. Im not sure what I would even want to upgrade to if I were to upgrade..

And the registry cleaners work great as far as getting you back to where you should be and searching for all that crap that shouldnt be there. its just really hard to find a free one. everyone wants around $30 for them.

Also its worth looking into alot of the registry tweaks that are out there because you can speed up alot with a little bit of typing. lol I ran a pentium 3 500mhz just up untill about a few months ago when I built this system. I had that computer for 6 years and it ran better than alot of the new computers I see around. but I went through and basicly tweaked everything on it and scanned for spyware and viruses once a week just to keep it clean.

[glc]

Run HijackThis and look at the log file - when you see all the crap running, you may see what's getting in the way. This is an excellent tool to analyze running processes, startups, and all the other baggage (browser helper objects, etc.) you have picked up. Remember, anything that installs into IE affects the whole OS because of the integration.

[mrmister1]

Try running some spyware prgrams and see what you find. Most likely the spyware has cluttered it up.

[HyperTF]

Originally Posted by glc Run HijackThis and look at the log file - when you see all the crap running, you may see what's getting in the way. This is an excellent tool to analyze running processes, startups, and all the other baggage (browser helper objects, etc.) you have picked up. Remember, anything that installs into IE affects the whole OS because of the integration.

Hey glc, thanks for that tip, I haven't had HijackThis before, but downloaded it after reading your post and found one IE crawler lurking around (crackspider) I don't know how it got there but I removed it all the same. I am pedantic around virus checking and spyware cleansing but this little sucker got through.... not for long!