Really slow Dell 5150 please help

[Whiskey]

Hi all,

Have a Dell 5150 desktop in at the moment. Owner was complaining of it being slow and suspected a virus.

So far I have disabled system restore and run CCleaner, Malwarebytes, Super Anti-Spyware, Hitman Pro, Avira Antivirus and Iobit 360 malware remover.

I have also uninstalled programs that the customer no longer needed, defragged the hard drive, disabled some programs in msconfig and installed windows updates.

The machine is still desperately slow. It has a 3 gig pentium 4 processor 512 mb of ram and is running xp home edition.

I know the ram is on the low side but I have seen similar machines with the same spec which are much quicker than this one. Sadly I don't have any of this type of ram in stock to test.

Any ideas on what I do next and what to tell my customer?

Cheers,

Whiskey

 

[red12049]

Hi all,

Have a Dell 5150 desktop in at the moment. Owner was complaining of it being slow and suspected a virus.

So far I have disabled system restore and run CCleaner, Malwarebytes, Super Anti-Spyware, Hitman Pro, Avira Antivirus and Iobit 360 malware remover.

I have also uninstalled programs that the customer no longer needed, defragged the hard drive, disabled some programs in msconfig and installed windows updates.

The machine is still desperately slow. It has a 3 gig pentium 4 processor 512 mb of ram and is running xp home edition.

I know the ram is on the low side but I have seen similar machines with the same spec which are much quicker than this one. Sadly I don't have any of this type of ram in stock to test.

Any ideas on what I do next and what to tell my customer?

Cheers,

Whiskey

What troubleshooting/diagnostics have you done?

Rick

 

[Whiskey]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for getting back to me so quick.

Haven't run any hardware diagnostics yet because my first thought was a virus. Do you think it could be a hardware fault with the drive itself or the ram?

Cheers,

Whiskey

 

[red12049]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for getting back to me so quick.

Haven't run any hardware diagnostics yet because my first thought was a virus. Do you think it could be a hardware fault with the drive itself or the ram?

Cheers,

Whiskey

Hmmm. So the customer diagnosed his computer, and you ran with it. Who's the professional supposed to be?

I have no idea what the problem may be. You haven't done any diagnostics to give anyone a real clue.

Rick

 

[OldSchoolPC]

Not a whole lot of info to go on but I'll blindly throw some stuff out there for ya. In what ways is it slow? If you defragged the hard drive, did you also defragment the registry? Use JKdefrag and make sure that everything gets defragmented. Since it only has 512 of ram it's probably using a lot of virtual RAM (hard drive page file) which is why the entire hard drive needs a defraged. You can also try repairing or reinstalling windows over current windows. Lastly, there's always backing up data and doing a fresh install (nuke and pave). Just make sure customer has CDs for reinstalls and make sure things like outlook get backed up.

 

[Whiskey]

Thanks for the advice guys.

I have run a diagnostics test on both the hard drive and the ram and no errors were found on either. The whole system still seems to take ages to open applications or browse the web.

Just running sfc/scannow to check the file integrity. Can't reinstall windows because the customer no longer has the original discs for xp, office etc. Any other ideas?

Cheers

 

[Kitten Kong]

Thanks for the advice guys.

I have run a diagnostics test on both the hard drive and the ram and no errors were found on either. The whole system still seems to take ages to open applications or browse the web.

Just running sfc/scannow to check the file integrity. Can't reinstall windows because the customer no longer has the original discs for xp, office etc. Any other ideas?

Cheers

For starters increase the ram. Also are there any other registry checkers installed apart from CCleaner?. If so, I would remove the others.

Couple of questions.

When is the pc slow?, upon boot up, general use.

How long does it take to boot from start

Have you checked the system processes, to see what is running.

Have you checked autoruns, and process explorer

 

[Martyn]

Check the resources, almost certainly it will be low so, as advised, put more memory in. Tell the client he needs more memory to start with, it's not expensive generally.

Check they haven't got these registry checkers installed. I had a laptop recently that had 4 gb of ram and ran like a dog. I found he had 3 registry checkers all battling for each other causing the problem. Uninstalled them and it flew.

 

[Whiskey]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the advice.

I have been through every process in both system config and task manager and there is nothing out of the ordinary in there. The system is surprisingly clean of malware. Malwarebytes and super anti spyware found nothing. Iobit 360 caught 5 entries including 180 solutions.ncase, misleading spy nomore and trojan wins32/agent.

Checked in the registry under the run command and nothing out of the ordinary there either.

No registry checkers as such but it does seem to be bogging down with McAfee which is part of the BT home hub software. Comes complete with a separate BT/Yahoo browser which I've now disabled and put explorer back to default.

This has been a real pain of a job!

Cheers,

 

[Kitten Kong]

Having McAfee on the machine with only 512mb of ram won't help for starters.

As I mentioned earlier, is it running slow on boot up, or generally slow?

Have you checked autoruns?

 

[Cornerstone Technologies]

In a lot of ways, that system sounds at the edge of its useful life, especcially at that configuration.

You need to track down RAM and actually troubleshoot a solution. RAM should improve the performance, but depending on how bogged down the system is, it might not be noticable.

To be honest, a format and reload may be the only way to improve this system to a acceptable level. I dont want to sound harsh, but many of these posts point to a level of uncertainty and a lack of confidence you have in your skills. The lack of troubleshooting is a big concern for me.

I worked at a place where the owners of the store would check computers in and have it already diagnosed. Trouble is, they just went with a story that the client told them. 9/10, I troubleshot the system before I read the service invoice. I saved their bacon many times. The same thing for you. You have to nail down a solid troubleshooting method.

 

[Mick]

You maybe have an application with a virtual memory leak? Not the most likely of things, but I've known it happen. Check the VM sizes and peak usage in Task Manager, first enabling the relevant columns, including PID.

 

[computerdoc]

Have you checked which processes are using the most memory and cpu time?

How much beyond 512 is your system running into the paged area?

 

[Whiskey]

Hi guys,

Thanks for all your help. Checked autoruns and shut down a couple of other apllications and the system is certainly running a lot quicker.

Paging file runs up to 485mb on start up and then runs at around 400mb.

Cheers

 

[Kitten Kong]

Definitely upgrade the ram. XP these days, requires around 1Gb.

Good to hear its starting to run faster.

 

[Whiskey]

Thank you to everyone who responded on this.

I am pleased to report that I have now installed 2 gigs of ram and after a final tune up with autoruns the system runs much better.

Kind regards,

John

 

[Jsch38]

Suggestion to spped slow laptop

Remove McCaffe it eats up system resources on WIN XP. Install Malware Bytes and AVG Antivirus and the system will speed up.

 

[PC Ops]

Good thing you upgraded the RAM. Had a 2003 IBM desktop with 2,6GHz Pentium 4 in last week week. Also only had 512 megs of RAM.

Got it running like a train again without installing extra RAM (customer's choice...) Point is, it is possible to run XP smoothly with 512 MB (although I also advice at least a gig nowadays). Be sure to get rid of the bloatware and other resource hogs. Go with MSE + Spywareblaster for security. Don't punish an older system with McAfee.

A N&P would have done miracles for you. Be sure to get yourself some copies of XP for future fixes.

Greetz