Slow computer defeats inept user

[Aeneas]

Bear in mind I am not very adept at technology.

A friend had a quick look and showed me something that said the POS is running slow because it is at or near 100% usage. This when I only had CalgaryPuck open.

Not running anything else that I am aware of, but wouldn't be hard for the computer to fool me.

Opening a topic on CP sometimes takes 40 seconds to a minute.
Pressing "reply" will result in a similar wait before being able to type.

I don't do much on the computer other than email, CP, and a couple hockey leagues. It is very frustrating doing anything with the slow speed and occasional freezing.

Aside from throwing out the window, is there anything a completely techno-challenged person like myself can do to find out what might be wrong?

Or suggestions on service/company that can help?
I don't think I need a new computer, it would just be nice if this average one would work better.

[Frank MetaMusil]

Run this:

http://www.stevengould.org/index.php...=29&Itemid=223

The program will ask if you want to run a demo cleaning, click "no". After the cleaning is done, let me know how much it found and if it made any difference.

[photon]

You can also bring up the task manager (right click on the task bar and it's one of the options), and go to the process list and sort by CPU utilization to see what program is using up all the processor.

[lazypucker]

I learned that quite often it won't worth the hassle to pump in more money and time to "save" an old machine. With computers so cheap these days, it will be easier (and less headaches) to go buy a new one. Just make sure you dispose the old piece of junk through the Alberta Electronics Recycling Program (http://www.albertarecycling.ca/)

[photon]

Sometimes that's true, but sometimes it's just a simple thing.. For example if he's using an older version of firefox and/or flash, it's possible it's a bug that's causing the CPU to be pegged at 100% and upgrading both those pieces of software would fix it.

[cKy]

Originally Posted by Frank MetaMusil

Run this:

http://www.stevengould.org/index.php...=29&Itemid=223

The program will ask if you want to run a demo cleaning, click "no". After the cleaning is done, let me know how much it found and if it made any difference.

How does this program compare to CCleaner? I use that one religiously and have had good experiences from it.

[Frank MetaMusil]

Originally Posted by cKy

How does this program compare to CCleaner? I use that one religiously and have had good experiences from it.

I had users run it when I worked at a help desk. Works extremely well and is lightweight.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by photon

You can also bring up the task manager (right click on the task bar and it's one of the options), and go to the process list and sort by CPU utilization to see what program is using up all the processor.

This and check for viruses that can also eat up your processing power.

I have an old Dell Celeron computer that I use as a backup with windows 7 installed in it and it's pretty zippy. I have no junk programs on it and keep it clean of viruses and with a good internet connection, it's pretty fine for surfing.

Another thing to do is to defrag your hard drive. There are some free programs that are much faster than the windows defragger.

[Pastiche]

Reformat

[Hack&Lube]

There are a lot of simple things you can do to clean up your computer but there may be a lot of complicated steps to diagnose the root of the problem. A reformat and reinstall of windows is probably the easiest way.

It's most likely you have some invasive programs eating up your resources or spyware or a virus doing something in the background chewing up your processing time.

Press CTRL-ALT-DEL, goto the processes tab, sort by memory usage to see what program is using most memory. Then sort by CPU usage to see what program is causing the 100% usage.

[sclitheroe]

You guys are all assuming its CPU, when it may not be. To the OP, are all your apps slow, or just web browsing in particular?

Extensive delays using a browser could be due to DNS configuration, or more likely, a broken plugin, Flash being the usual culprit. I would verify DNS lookups run quickly (run “nslookup www.yahoo.com” from a command prompt, and the answer back should be almost instant, not several seconds).

Also look in Internet Explorer -> Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN settings, and uncheck any boxes in there. A broken or missing proxy could cause IE to spend a lot of time on each element of a page trying to contact a proxy that never responds.

After that, I would uninstall Flash and any browser toolbars via Add/Remove program. See if this helps the issue. I often find a broken flash install causes the browser to hang or take forever to load a page when it hits the Flash portion. They are easy to reinstall at a later time, but its useful to remove them for troubleshooting.

[Aeneas]

Thanks to all who responded.
I started with what seemed simplest to me, that being the task manager...

These were the biggest things running:

iexplore.exe 34,500
iexplore.exe 5,600
explorer.exe 12,200
DWM.exe 28,200
sidebar.exe 6,000

and taskmgr.exe itself 3,300

The usage fluctuates wildly with me doing nothing but having IE on. Mostly 80-100.
Tried opening a video through Windows Media, and that flatlined it at 100% for the duration.
There are 83 processes running, and just the one application: Internet Explorer.

[Aeneas]

The physical memory usage is at 64%.

[Frank MetaMusil]

Originally Posted by Aeneas

Thanks to all who responded.
I started with what seemed simplest to me, that being the task manager...

These were the biggest things running:

iexplore.exe 34,500
iexplore.exe 5,600
explorer.exe 12,200
DWM.exe 28,200
sidebar.exe 6,000

and taskmgr.exe itself 3,300

The usage fluctuates wildly with me doing nothing but having IE on. Mostly 80-100.
Tried opening a video through Windows Media, and that flatlined it at 100% for the duration.
There are 83 processes running, and just the one application: Internet Explorer.

You need to download Spybot - http://www.safer-networking.org

Download the updates and immunize before you run the scan, you've got malware.

[cKy]

Originally Posted by Aeneas

Thanks to all who responded.
I started with what seemed simplest to me, that being the task manager...

These were the biggest things running:

iexplore.exe 34,500
iexplore.exe 5,600
explorer.exe 12,200
DWM.exe 28,200
sidebar.exe 6,000

and taskmgr.exe itself 3,300

The usage fluctuates wildly with me doing nothing but having IE on. Mostly 80-100.
Tried opening a video through Windows Media, and that flatlined it at 100% for the duration.
There are 83 processes running, and just the one application: Internet Explorer.

83 ????? That seems like WAY too many things. I would recommend running MSCONFIG (Start - Run - msconfig) and goto Startup. Disable some of the things you dont need to start up when you boot (like printer software, etc)

[Hack&Lube]

You have two iexplore.exe's running. That usually sign of an internet browser that crashed and is sitting around as a memory leak in the background. Kill one or both of them and try again.

83 processes is a lot.

Get http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/

Run it and it will spit out a log of all your background programs. You can paste the result here for people to check out or google for a hijackthis log analyzer and it can tell you if you have viruses and stuff in the background.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Aeneas

Thanks to all who responded.
I started with what seemed simplest to me, that being the task manager...

These were the biggest things running:

iexplore.exe 34,500
iexplore.exe 5,600
explorer.exe 12,200
DWM.exe 28,200
sidebar.exe 6,000

and taskmgr.exe itself 3,300

The usage fluctuates wildly with me doing nothing but having IE on. Mostly 80-100.
Tried opening a video through Windows Media, and that flatlined it at 100% for the duration.
There are 83 processes running, and just the one application: Internet Explorer.

That says how much memory is being used, but I was after the CPU usage. Click on the CPU column to sort by that and tell us what processes are 80-100%, at the top most of the time.

Also there's a performance tab, and let us know what it says about memory available and total.

83 processes is a lot, but not totally unreasonable depending on what's installed.. my HP print driver installs like 5 processes, and having iTunes installed puts in 3 or 4.. it adds up fast.

[photon]

Originally Posted by cKy

83 ????? That seems like WAY too many things. I would recommend running MSCONFIG (Start - Run - msconfig) and goto Startup. Disable some of the things you dont need to start up when you boot (like printer software, etc)

This can be risky if one doesn't know what they are doing, plus doing a whole bunch at once can make it hard to make something work again.. do that and then in a week find out you can't scan a document or sync your music player or something and getting it to work again can be tough if you don't know what you are doing.

As long as the processes don't actually do anything (i.e. just sit there idle), it's not that bad.

[Torture]

Step 1. Download Firefox or Google Chrome
Step 2. ?????
Step 3. Profit

For your convenience...
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html
http://www.google.com/chrome/index.html

[Pinner]

Is IE that bad ? I don't talk to anybody about puters so I don't know.... It seems to work fine ??

It is using 87-100,000 k CPU averages about 15%