Hourglass Takes 5-10 minutes to go away

[granogue]

I have a Sony Vaio laptop with Windows ME, a Pentium III processor, and 20 gb free space. Sometimes when I open up a program, like Word or Adobe Reader, the hourglass takes 5-10 minutes to go away. I haven't had this problem in the past. This is what I've done so far to solve the problem:

Ran AVG Antivirus: It found no bugs.

Deleted junk files: That didn't work.

Defragmented hard drive: Didn't solve problem.

My laptop isn't fast to begin with because I don't have much RAM. But since this problem hasn't occured before I was wondering if you tech whizzes out there might be able to offer me some helpful advice. I'd really appreciate it.

[risk_reversal]

If you use this pc online then you may have picked up some spyware which AV would not pick up. In which case your first port of call is to run Spybot, Ad-Aware or HijackThis. One of the symptoms of spyware/malware is that your pc runs slow.

I would suggest either of the first 2 listed above in the first instance. If you find a problem then go for HijackThis and post your log in a malware forum where one of the moderators will guide you in removal of your unwanted 'guest'

[granogue]

Thanks for the info. but I forgot to mention that I already ran Spybot and it didn't find anything.

[risk_reversal]

Just because Spybot did not find anything does not mean that you do not have any form of spyware. Sometimes one spyware program will not pick up a certain type of malware. I take it that you were also running the latest version of SB 1.3 with the latest definitions.

I would nevertheless try HijackThis, the latest version is (I Think) 1.98.2. It's a standalone product in as much as it does not install. You download it and just run it.

[granogue]

Thank you! I'll try that.

[rjfvillarosa]

Consider the idea of running your antivirus and malware scans in safe mode with system restore disabled.
Have a read of this thread for the why's and how's of this procedure.

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=115633

[GaryRouth]

. . . since this is a laptop, there are two laptop issues to quickly check on: 1) if this symptom happens when on battery, see if it goes away when on the AC adapter - it might be that the battery is aging and isn't holding the charge like it used to. 2) if the laptop seems unusually warm when this happens, check the system temps [either in the Bios screens, or with a software program] ---

. . . in addition to the steps above [including the virus/spyware steps from the earlier replies], you might want to check on your system resource usage [right-click My Computer, select "Properties", select "Performance"]. If the resources are below 80% at startup, before you've even opened any programs, that's a bit on the low side. If you're up around 85% to 95%, don't worry about resources. If the resources seem low, you may want to limit any unnecessary startup background processes on your system. A good background on the whole situation, with details on how to identify the processes, how to stop them from running (using tools like msconfig, or editing certain keys in the Registry, etc), see the Startup articles over at pacs-portal - http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_index.htm

Other issues with MS Word opening slowly can sometimes be helped by forcing Word to recreate the normal.dot template file. You rename the normal.dot file to something like normal.old -- then reboot, and when you start Word again, it will create a new normal.dot template file, and may bring the program's opening speed back to its usual.

. . . and it couldn't hurt to run some diagnostics on the hardware, just in case somethings off there. MemTest86 ( http://www.memtest.org ) and the diagnostics from the hard drive manufacturer will give you a good idea of how the memory and hard drive are doing.

Hope it's one of the inexpensive cures.
. . . Gary