Computer is sluggish

[rjbinney]

Asked and answered, here 'tis.

Looks OK to me... But then again, I don't really know a whole lot.

I DID run ewido again, and this time it found nothing. (I had repaired the three things it found first time).

The machine is only a year old, it can't be crapping out THAT badly, even for a Dell!

Thanks

[Fed]

No big problems in there.
Is it slow in safe mode?
Is it slow when not connected to the net?
Is it slow when plugged into mains supply?
I'm off to work, I'll come back later today.

[unlovedwarrior]

patio would that winsocket fix you gave me work?? its worth a shot

[rjbinney]

Is it slow in safe mode?

Actually, no, not really.

Is it slow when not connected to the net?

Well, it's on a wireless network; I'd never tried NOT having it hook up. But I did, and it seemed - at startup - to not be so bad, but that was a ruse. It is still very sluggish. For example, I click on a menu in Acrobat Reader, and it takes between eight and ten seconds for the menu to drop.

Additionally, this problem started Monday evening. I have since replaced my DSL modem and router, and no noticeable impact. I do get good ping times, still.

Is it slow when plugged into mains supply?

I presume you mean the plugged in vs. on battery? No noticeable difference between the two.

I'm off to work, I'll come back later today.

Lucky you; this is distracting me from getting resumes out.

I've also noticed that the HD light is on almost nonstop.

Attached is some tiled screenshots of MSCONFIG... Which I'm sure is redundant after looking at the HJT log.

Time to run Chkdsk?

[unlovedwarrior]

WinsockXPFix.exe

google this the icon is a red cross


run it click fix and restart see if that helps


sorry i cant find the website

[Fed]

Anyway, I looked in task manager and had "cidaemon.exe" in there... Never had seen that before, so I fixed the indexing settings, and that went away.

I'd put that all back to the way it was, I'm not sure what you did to fix the indexing settings but whatever it was...unfix it.

Get ccleaner, run the cleaner & also scan for issues, defrag, reboot & check.
I'd also disable all the startup items in msconfig, reboot & if it's fast then enable them one at a time.

[rjbinney]

It was acting up, and the first thing I did was check Task Manager... Saw that cidaemon.exe thing, and Googled it. There were a few folks that all seemed to be describing similar symptoms and suggested that tactic, so I did it. I will add it back, but I think I will do that LAST! (Nothing personal...)

I ran ccCleaner on Saturday morning... Don't recall if I scanned for issues or not afterwards.

I will try your msconfig suggestion before the defrag.

Does anyone else (besides the pop-up Windows balloon) suggest Chkdsk? Or is that just crazy talk?

About to run WinsockXPFix.exe.

Crossed fingers here...

rjb

[Fed]

Whatever you do, just do things one at a time rebooting & checking before doing something else.
chkdsk won't hurt your computer and it takes hardly any time to run.

[rjbinney]

One thing at a time???!?!? What, no DOE guys here? (Just kidding....)

I disabled EVERYthing. It seems to be better, although still a little choppy. It's like back in the 80s when I would overload my Mac, it would just be, well, not as smooth, for lack of a better word. But it could totally be my imagination, as I have stared at this wayyyy too much.

I guess it's when I add the "/f" to Chkdsk that it can potentially do some damage, huh?

Do you recommend Defragging BEFORE adding back the processes?

And, is there a recommended Defrag utility I should use instead of the XP one?

I also have the Ultimate Boot for Windows CD... Any utilities on that I should try?

====

Thanks for your help. I don't know if this is BETTER than reformatting, or faster, but at least I feel like I'm accomplishing something.

rjb

[rjbinney]

One other thing: I noticed that it takes a long time to boot while still on the main XP screen - BEFORE asking for User Logon. Would THAT be impacted by Startup issues in MSCONFIG? I thought Startup.ini would come into play AFTER a User logs on?

[rjbinney]

From chkdsk:

58597055 KB total disk space.
33600744 KB in 37752 files.
     10904 KB in 3147 indexes.
           48 KB in bad sectors.
   116091 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
24869268 KB available on disk.

...and it is going to Defrag overnight. The "Estimated disk usage before" and "Estimated disk usage after" pictures are *censored* near identical.

[unlovedwarrior]

winsockfix thing i gave u should work

[Fed]

I'd be very concerned about the bad sectors on your HD before going any further with this.
Run HD diagnostics on it from the manufacturer's website & see what turns up.

[Fed]

The following text was 'borrowed' from pcstats.com...

Warning signs to watch for Advertisement
 
While you may be able to repair software errors caused by bad sectors, and in some cases you may be able to repair the bad sectors themselves, if your drive has begun to fail mechanically nothing will stop the process.

The catch then is to detect the imminent failure of your drives before they give out on you and data is lost. Let's look at some common warning signs of impending hard drive failure:

Frequent but irregular crashes, especially while booting up Windows.
Frequent and cryptic error messages while performing typical activities like moving files.
Folder and file names that have been scrambled and changed.
Disappearing files and folders.
Really loo....ong waits to access folders and files.
Hard disk is silent for a long period after you request data by opening a file or folder.
Garbled output from open files or printing.
Hard drive grinds away constantly because of noisy bearings.

[rjbinney]

I'd be very concerned about the bad sectors on your HD before going any further with this.

Really? This may be where my naivete starts to show... I figured 48KB bad meant that 99.991808462 percent of my drive was A-OK... Can't Windows account for bad sectors?

Let's look at some common warning signs of impending hard drive failure:

This doesn't sound good, but OK.

Frequent but irregular crashes, especially while booting up Windows.

No.

Frequent and cryptic error messages while performing typical activities like moving files.

You mean like this one?

...I ran Ad-Aware in safe mode last night (that is, I was running XP in Safe Mode and launched Ad-Aware)... ran "Smart System Scan", with "Negligible Risk Entries" and "Low-Risk Threat" searches both ENABLED.

It ran for about six seconds - and I got this message in a little Windows bubble:

[highlight]Windows was unable to save all the data for the file c"\program files\common files\installshield\driver\8\Intel 32. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file[/highlight]

(I also tried backing up a 7GB Docs directory, and had two files fail because of "cyclic redundancy check". Not "frequent", but "cryptic"? You tell me - I know what it means, I just don't know if it's necessarily related.

Folder and file names that have been scrambled and changed.

No.

Disappearing files and folders.

Not that I've noticed.

Really loo....ong waits to access folders and files.

Great lumps of gravy, YES!

Hard disk is silent for a long period after you request data by opening a file or folder.

No.

Garbled output from open files or printing.

No.

Hard drive grinds away constantly because of noisy bearings.

Well, it's spinning constantly. "Grinding" - not really. Well, maybe. I can't tell if it's the HD or the fan. It's not noisy, just noticeable.

I ran Defrag, and it's been parked for at least four hours on "Defragmenting... 61% Compacting Files":


OK, this is probably going to make lots of otherwise friendly and helpful people unhappy. At least you will roll your eyes and dismiss me as a fool. But, unless Santa robs a liquor store (or I get a job, soon), there's no cabbage for a new hard drive.

I'm currently running Windows' "Error-checking" utility, with the "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" option selected. It's parked in "Phase 4", with no toolbar and the cancel button greyed out. I'll let that cook for a while and see what happens.


Then I'm gonna go to Dell's site and see if there's the HD Diagnostics you recommended earlier. I will also tool around on my UBCD4Win and see if there's any magic.

Then I guess I will reformat and ride it out.

Well, at least it's small comfort knowing my firewalls work!