xp media center

[adambcohen]

I am stumped. Took my clients computer home because it was so slow. I ran spyware and virus scan and some other things. The hard drive is still at a crawl. I am out of ideas. The only thing left that I have not done is hijack this and spot the results. Any help would be great.
Thanks
Adam

[Bryce W]

Theres still a few things you can give a try, did you check the processes for anything nasty using something like Process Explorer (http://www.technibble.com/repair-tool-of-the-week-process-explorer/) or Task Manager? If you dont know what you are looking for, look at everything that isnt a essential windows process (http://www.technibble.com/essential-processes-needed-to-run-windows/). If you use Process Explorer, it will show the company name that made each particular process. Look for ones without a company name, they may be suspicious.

It also may be too many legitimate programs lagging the computer if you cant find any nasties. Check out this article (http://www.technibble.com/case-study-attack-of-the-legitimate-programs/) for more information.

[greggh]

To add to whats already been said you should also give a defragment and a registry cleaning a try. Those wont SOLVE the problem, but they will generally speed things up.

[Blues]

I would also ask what has been done recently to the machine in question.

[Buzz]

To add also to what everyone else has said...

You also might want to run a chkdsk (start>my computer>right click hard drive>properties>tools). Then in error checking click check now you will get a window, check both options then start--you will have to restart your computer to check the disk, this will fix errors and recovers information from a sector on the hard drive losing its magnetism and places it on a good sector.

Also check the hard drives free space (start>my computer>right click hard drive>properties) and it will tell you used and unused space not having enough can cause some issues. You need about 30%, you might be able to get away with little as about 15%. If you don't have that amount you could run the disk clean up in the same box to free up more.

One more thing you can check is the virtual memory (start>control panel>system>advanced_ virtual memory_ change) in performance click settings. How much ever ram you have multiply it by 1.5 for example you have 256mb ram 256 multiply 1.5 is 384 thats what you would set in initial and maximum size for your virtual memory.