Question for full time Windows Techs

[anonymous Mac Tech]

I'm looking at a Dell Vostro V1510 Core 2 Duo, XP SP3, 2GB of RAM that the client is complaining is running slow. The machine takes a good 2-3 minutes before all the startup items load and for the system tray to load all its items. The thing is running the Comcast version of Norton Security Suite, Bsecure internet protection service, carbonite, and quickbooks has at least 2 or 3 processes that are starting up and always running in the background. I ran MBAM and it came up with 26 bots and then found Norton had about about 13 things quaranteened. Chkdsk comes up clean. The client is super paranoid about security, but at the same time wants the machine to run faster? I was thinking of blowing away the Nortons and Bsecure and then possibly load Microsoft Security Essentials. Then maybe set Carbonite to not run in the background all the time.

Any thoughts?

 

[ProTech Support]

One thing I tend to do is disable all of the startup items that are not necessary. I am sure you know how to do that, but just in case (I know you are a Mac lover), here:

Start >> Run >> type "msconfig" and hit enter >> goto the startup tab.

Secondly, I would go ahead and condense the AV & Internet Security into one program. I have personally never used MSE, but you can go that route. I usually recommend one of the paid versions of AVG.

After doing that, it would definitely be a good idea to run something like CCleaner to get rid of all the temporary junk.

 

[brownie]

What is task manager telling you?

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

One thing I tend to do is disable all of the startup items that are not necessary. I am sure you know how to do that, but just in case (I know you are a Mac lover), here:

Start >> Run >> type "msconfig" and hit enter >> goto the startup tab.

Thanks ProTech, already ran msconfig and narrowed down some things. I shut down the indexing service along with some other stuff because it seems as though that was hogging some resources. The dilemma I'm having is blowing away the Bsecure stuff becuase they obviously paid for it. Nortons was a free download with Comcast so I'm not too concerned with blowing that away. Also anyones thoughts on carbonite as a backup solution?

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

What is task manager telling you?

Still 54 running processes. CPU staying at around 4%-8% usage. Looks like there is 1.5GB of RAM free. 3/4 free HD space as well.

 

[hardtoremember]

Microsoft Security Essentials is good in my opinion. Norton is a terrible resource hog and is just plain no good. Talk to your customer before you change to MSE though and make your recommendations to the customer about Bsecure. I have found that when I explain to a customer why I want to get rid of a paid program and how their system will be better of with product "X" they are 99% of the time fine with it.

Quickbooks and many like programs do not need to start with the computer. There are many many programs that want to start but don't need to so I would go through it again. I have about 8 starting on mine.

Ccleaner is a great tool too.

 

[brownie]

Still 54 running processes. CPU staying at around 4%-8% usage. Looks like there is 1.5GB of RAM free. 3/4 free HD space as well.

In that case, in task manager under the processes tab, click "view" then "select columns" and select I/O Reads, I/O Writes, I/O Read Bytes, I/O Write Bytes.

To save me blithering on, there's an excellent article to diagnose drive thrashing through task manager at http://www.watchingthenet.com/identify-processes-that-cause-high-disk-activity-in-windows.html, it'll explain how to understand the counters above.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

In that case, in task manager under the processes tab, click "view" then "select columns" and select I/O Reads, I/O Writes, I/O Read Bytes, I/O Write Bytes.

To save me blithering on, there's an excellent article to diagnose drive thrashing through task manager at http://www.watchingthenet.com/identify-processes-that-cause-high-disk-activity-in-windows.html, it'll explain how to understand the counters above.

I'm checking on the disk thrashing right now. The biggest offenders seem to be sprtcmd.exe which is basically Dell support and SQL server? Also noticing that mostly the reads numbers are higher than the rights so from my personal experience I can rule out excessive page file usage.

To others, have used ccleaner before and have been pretty happy with it. Glad to hear you others recoommend it as well. Also hardtoremember, thanks for the reply on MSE over Nortons and Bsecure.

 

[MrUnknown]

Regarding Carbonite, don't disable it. It is their backup solution and if you disable it, their backups will not be updated.

 

[trapped]

I always get rid of the Dell support stuff or at least stop it from starting up automatically.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

Regarding Carbonite, don't disable it. It is their backup solution and if you disable it, their backups will not be updated.

Yeah, thanks. I just wasn't sure to leave it running all the time or to have them manually do their backups. Thinks I'll leave it on to avoid any possible complications. Talked to them just a few minutes ago. Dumping Nortons, installing MSE, leaving Bsecure to serve as a firewall (for now). She likes the web filtering it provides. Talked to her about setting up an openDNS for web filtering on all her machines remotely instead of running Bsecure locally on all machines.

 

[brownie]

the client is complaining is running slow.

Just a thought, the client is referring to local applications and not webpages or anything else off the web?

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

Just a thought, the client is referring to local applications and not webpages or anything else off the web?

Correct. Filler filler filler.

 

[hardtoremember]

I always get rid of the Dell support stuff or at least stop it from starting up automatically.

LOL doesn't sound like Dell Support is doing too much for them right now anyways!

 

[callthatgirl]

You had me at Norton.

Remove with removal tool.

Reboot.

Fast computer again. LOL

I have had too many Comcast Norton complaints to not even mess around with it anymore, it's free and goes bye bye...

 

[AtYourService]

I would say Norton too, but first I would run a rootkit dection tools if you found some bots on the computer
you can try running combofix on it it will use gmer to detect and remove anything fishy

 

[rainmaker2112]

You didn't mention how long the person has had the computer. A few other things to check:

• When was the last time a defrag was done? This might seem obvious, but many people have never defragged and it can cause the disk thrashing.
• Ditto to dumping Norton
• Run CCleaner or ATF Cleaner to clean out the junk files
• Make sure they aren't running Windows Firewall along with the Bsecure stuff, since multiple virus engines or firewalls slow things down
• Another option is to run MSCONFIG /Diagnostic startup and see if that affects the speed. It should with only basic items loading. You could always add one item at a time to see when the speed slows down.

Good luck on this!

 

[RegEdit]

Try running process explorer and autoruns to see what is running in the background. MSconfig only shows a little of what is going on.