Slowwww PC

[-DVD-]

Hi, I'm have an advent pc with the following spec:
Pentium 4 2.80
120 Gb HD
512 DDR Ram
XP home edition
+graphics card, dvd-rom etc

For some reason the pc is very slow, taking ages loading windows yet it has hardly anything on it, only 20Gb. There doesnt seem to be any virus or an app draining the ram in the background. I've done a disk clean up yet its still way to slow . Is it normal for the CPU usage to go up to and over 70 percent when only internet explorer is running? Any suggestions as to what the problem is would be greatly appriciated.

[redwudz]

No, that does'nt sound normal. Did this just start or has it always been like this? Did you try to restore to an older setup? If you can find what process is slowing things down, you may be able to remove it. Unfortunately, the easiest way to cure this sort of problem may be to reformat and start over. You can check the Task Manager and see what else might be running. You do need a good antivirus program and a program like Spybot to keep cookies and other stuff under control.

[-DVD-]

thanks redwudz, the pc hasnt always been like this, used to b fast, one mornin it is dam slow all of a sudden. I think a reformat is in order.

[808smokey]

Mine has had the same problem. It was windows Xp Pro that puked. I just reloaded it and it was fine. It took almost 2 minutes load and shutdown the computer

[Goku]

i think it may be that you might have too many programs to load up with windows which you dont need. i have had these problems so i decided to reduce the amount of programs which start with windows (that i never used) and i checked for spyware but there was none. i would say for you to defragment you harddrive but you seem to have a big enough sized harddrive with very little data on it so i dont know what's wrong. definately check the programs that load with windows and search for spyware.

[pixel]

I've seen this happen too an another PC. Virtually nothing had been changed but it ran real slow, but a load back to a previous image fixed it all and runs nice and smoothly.

P.S. If you do take images of your PC, remember to take one of it just as it is now before you go back to an old image in case going back doesn't work.

[maestro5050]

Go to START--->RUN and type MSCONFIG then hit enter. Click on the STARTUP tab and see how many programs you have checkmarked. Each checkmark represents a piece of software that is starting up everytime your computer does. I am willing to bet that your computer is freezing due to one or more of these softwares. Just go through and uncheck the boxes for the softwares that you do not use every time your computer is on. This does not delete programs, and they can still be launched from the start menu. It will just help save some of your resources and prevent programs from bumping heads with one another.

As others said, you can try restoring to an earlier registry file or you can reinstall Windows, but I would take a shot at the MSCONFIG method first.

[-DVD-]

checked out the msconfig method, turns out there were loads of useless programs, now pc is running as fast as ever. Thanks for all the help ,bonne année!

[maestro5050]

Glad I could help.

[slimmx]

I have a similar problem. Before I used to run a 1ghz Amd, 512 sdram, 2 hds - 1. 20gb WD 2. 80gb MAxtor. Pc ran very fast. (it was a selfbuilt pc)
My friend gave me his Pentium 4 2ghz, 30gb WD 256 ddr pc2100 ram and I added my 80 GB Maxtor from the previous pc. For some reason it runs a lot slower then my previous pc. I am thinking maybe because its a DELL and I set something wrong or something because DELL need specific drivers and all. I don't know what to do!!!!