Important Problem With Work Computer

[QuickSilver]

Hi guys, my mom has a Compaq comp that we have upgraded to WinXP and all has been running great for some time now. All of a sudden today, the system is running dog slow, to the point that it is hard to even use it. Everything takes forever, loading word, Internet explorer, defragging, it all takes forever. We have made no changes to the system at all, either with hardware or software. I tried system restore and that didn't help it at all. HELP!!! BTW, the comp did this once before when Win98 was on it, but if I remember right, it was only with Word. When we put on XP it quit.

[sdkfz]

You say defragging takes forever, try it in safe mode.

1) How full is the hard drive? If there is no room for swap file it will dog down.
2) How much ram? this will excaberate #1 if low and to an XP box 256 MB is borderline low
3) Have you checked for virus trojans etc? Run spybot and adaware for spyware and run a virus check with whatever ou are using for software.
4) System restore and internet temp files clogging up the hard drive? - drop their disk usage to very low, with modern hard drive sizes the default percentages end up being a huge amount of space
5) What is running on the machine at load up? got a lot of things like real player, messenger services? Remove them

[QuickSilver]

The only things running in the background are things that she uses all the time, no extra junk. I have tried running the comp in safe mode, and when I do everything seems to go back to full speed again, except that Disk Defragmentor seems to get stuck at the file compacting stage. The HDD is 120GB and only a tiny fraction of it is used. The ram is 256, but it has been running with 256 for a long time and doing just fine. I have disk usage for net stuff set to 5mb, so that should be ok. I will have to try the virus scan in full blown windows as safe mod won't run norton.

[Alfie]

It could be a hard drive error,run a diagnostic on the drive and as outlined,check the drive to see how much room is left.
If you did an upgrade over Win 98 this can be problemmatic.
You may wish to do a clean install and use ntfs file system.
Is the bios on motherboard or on hard drive?
make sure l2 cache is enabled in bios and have you flashed the bios or upgraded them?

[QuickSilver]

The BIOS is on mobo. The HDD only has about 4gig used out of 120 (if that) and is nearly new. The system was running fine until just this morning. Mom says that it's mostly Word that has been giving her trouble, so maybe I'll try reinstalling that, although I'll have to come up with some way of backing up all the settings. Everything is fine in safe mode, so I doubt if it's hardware.

[Alfie]

If word has a document file(saved work) simply copy that and reinstall word,look for patches for it,which version of word is it?

[Panama Red]

Just curious. Does the computer with the problem happen to be running Norton Anti Virus? If so, read my post here.

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...threadid=85403

[pam123]

Have you checked it for virus or other malware ?

[Northernwinds]

Id also try running msconfig with a diagnostic startup if everything is running up too speed then you can go though the list of items in there to see whats casuing you the problem and remove it.

[QuickSilver]

OK, I did a full system scan and did not turn up any viruses. Scandisk found no errors. I defragged the system. System Restore will not fix the problem. Ok, that's my recap, so now for the new stuff. To answer Panama Red's question, her system is running NAV, but I have disabled NAV toataly from msconfig, getting rid of any services or startup items connected to it, the problem persists. I will try that diognostic startup and see what happens.

[QuickSilver]

I just noticed something else. Once word is open and you go to the file menu and open a word file, word sits there for a long time doing nothing, with text on the bottom bar that says "requesting virus scan". It eventually gets past this and the text show up, but it takes a long, long time.

[minsonngo]

It sounds like you have a bad hard drive. I would get a hard drive diagnostic utility from the manufacturer of the hard drive installed in your computer and see what the results are with the tests. I had a couple of computers that customers brought in a while back with the same symptoms and I ran the diagnostic utility and it turned out that the hard drive was bad. I replaced the hard drive and reinstalled the operating system and everything else and all was well afterwards.

[pam123]

It could be the HDD or you could have one of those new nasties that can fake out AVs.
How about a trip to House Call ?

[QuickSilver]

Ok, I think I found it, but I still have a problem. I ran the comp in diagnostic mode, and everything was back up to speed. I put the startup items back and everything was still ok. I put the services back and BAM! I had trouble again. I assumed this ment a problem with one of the services, so I went through the services in section of 8, restarting and trying word each time, until finaly I got a section that fouled up on me. Then I started getting rid of the services in that section one at a time. When I disabled DHCP Client, all the problems quit. So I put all the services back except for DHCP Client, and the comp runs just as well as it ever did, no problems. The problem is that the system wont get online without DHCP Client, so what do I do now?

[QuickSilver]

Under the properties to the DHCP Client service, it says that the path to the exe is C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe -k netsvcs. I looked at this and figured that there was an obvious link to svchost. When I look in Windows Task Manager, I see 4 svchost.exe file running at the same time. One is Local Service, one is Network Service, and two are System. Should all of these be there at the same time?

[Northernwinds]

thats normal to see more then one svchost.exe running try disabling your automatic updates its the tab in your system properties. I dunno thats all i can think of off the top of my head but lemme search google see if i can find anything

[pam123]

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314056
I found this and I'm looking for more info

[QuickSilver]

Thanks for the link pam! I'll keep looking for more info too.

[Northernwinds]

if disabling your auto updates and restarting the computer didn't have any affect try reinstalling svchost.exe from the cd assuming your cd drive is located on D:\ run the following command, back up your currect svchost.exe before you reinstall though.

expand.exe d:\i386\svchost.ex_ C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe

[QuickSilver]

I have automatic updates disabled already so I'll try your reinstall idea and see what happens.

[QuickSilver]

Here's another prob. I can't ever get to svchost because it is always in use by something, even in safemode. Endtasking it results in a timed system shutdown. Now what!?!?!?!

[Northernwinds]

U need to disable system restore so you can remove svchost.exe

I think thats all you need to disable to remove that file. Do you got AIM or MSN it prolly be better if I could talk too ya on one of those programs.

[QuickSilver]

Sorry, I don't have any of those programs, but I will try this again with system restore disabled. I will keep posting. THX!

[QuickSilver]

Disabling of System Restore did not work, there was still something using the file, and when I tried to end task it, it did a timed shutdown again. Maybe I should put the HDD in another comp and replace the file that way.

[pam123]

svchost.exe certainly hasn't been making friends for itself.
It's the process the blaster worm hit last summer but it slows down computers as well.
Scroll down this thread till you get the guys who tell you how to manage it :http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforum...read.php?t=154

[Northernwinds]

I dunno, I thought there was a NET STOP command to disable svchost but I can't find anything on it so im not to sure, i guess the only way you can really remove the file is in DOS using a bootdisk to get there or if your using NTFS filesystem use your windows disk and go into the repair mode in the windows setup.

I suppose if you wanted too you can use the expand.exe and exact the file to another location, boot into DOS remove the file then were u placed the new svchost put that back into the windows system folder.

But as pam says too about it being a virus when I was looking for stuff on how to disable the file I saw alot of topics about the file being infected with a virus

[QuickSilver]

Well, I finally managed to reinstall the file by putting the HDD into my own comp so that the OS was not running from her drive anymore. Sadly, this didn't help, the problem is still there. Is there anyway that I can get away with not using the DHCP Client service. If i can get away with disabling that, then everything would be fine.

[QuickSilver]

Good call pam123!!! I tried the guys suggestions in the link you gave me, and everything is back to normal now. Thanks to all you guys, especially Northernwinds and Pam123.