Computer bog-down

[Thorin]

My newest fastest computer has somehow become my slowest computer   Here's some symptoms:

- interminably slow start-up
- task bar takes forever to paint
- icons on desktop stay as generic icons until they slowly, one by one, switch to their proper icons
- Start -> All Programs, if I hover over the Games menu the All Programs menu freezes

I have McAfee AV running constantly (with ActiveShield on), and have run a couple of online AV scans.  I found some adware installed and removed it I have installed, then thought to run Ewido.

There do not appear to be any extraneous processes running, as far as I can see in Task Manager.  I recognize and know what each process in there is used for.  I have not yet run a rootkit finder because RootkitRevealer 1.7 doesn't work on my machine (something to do with my hard drive reporting a hex value as part of its name that RootkitRevealer doesn't understand) and I don't know of any other trustworthy rootkit finders.

The whole machine is simply slow.  Imagine using XP in a slow-motion movie.  The kicker is last week the machine was running normally, and I can't determine when it changed or what changed.  I've looked at recently installed programs (just a couple kids' games) and uninstalled them.  I've looked at recently installed Windows updates and rolled them back.  All to no avail.

Any suggestions?  I'm at the point where I'm thinking off inventorying the machine, backing up all the documents, and starting from scratch.

[Lazybones]

- Check your system properties... Is the correct amount of ram being displayed? If you suddenly had less ram that might explain the problems.. The DIMMS can come loose or go bad.

- in device manager, find your ATA controllers and make sure that the channel your hard drive is attached to is running in DMA mode.

- Go to your hard drive manufacturers site and find the drive diagnostic tools.. Ususly they are a special boot disk.. This should tell you if there is anything wrong with the way your drive is operating.

[Melbosa]

System Restore... what a resource hawg!

[Lazybones]

System Restore... what a resource hawg!

While I used to agree when harddrives where small and my system didn't have much RAM, system restore has actually saved me some time at work when application upgrades have pooched the registry.

However on a system with less than 1GB of ram and a hard drive will not very much space, it is a good idea to disable it.

[Mr. Analog]

You might also want to check the CPU clock speed in the BIOS, with all the EM on Tuesday night it may have caused some problems and when that BIOS panics it goes into its "safe" settings (CPU clockspeed goes to slowest setting, etc).

[Melbosa]

System Restore... what a resource hawg!

While I used to agree when harddrives where small and my system didn't have much RAM, system restore has actually saved me some time at work when application upgrades have pooched the registry.

However on a system with less than 1GB of ram and a hard drive will not very much space, it is a good idea to disable it.

It works great for a system in an Office Environment.  Home machines, more often than not, even new ones, it is the root cause of all system slowness.  Why?  Because these machines change so much with downloads, installs, etc, that system restore has multiple restore points for even a single day.  And like incremental backups, the more you have, the longer it takes to index, categorize, etc.

9/10 this has worked on numerous client's I have with home machines.  Especially with Kids.  That and spyware .

[Darren Dirt]

Have you tried running something like "Winpooch" to confirm no applications are attempting to do anything that is causing the bogdown? (i.e. registry or network access constantly...)

[Adams]

Can anyone say Defrag... if you have a new system, downloaded a few hundred gigs of stuff the drive will be messy. Try the standard

Windows Update
Temp File Cleanup (aka Disk Cleanup)
RegClean
Internet Temporary Files Cleanup
Chkdsk
Defrag

Note if you have any kind of raid setup such as 5, 10...etc a drive might have failed. Or its rebuilding the index.
If you have raid, such as a raid 5 setup, every so often the drives loose sync and they have to resync it slows down the machine quite a bit.

[Thorin]

Turns out I had a whole bunch of unreadable file areas of the drive.  chkdsk c: /r fixed them for me, but I don't know if it deleted any files in the process.  I saw only one message stating a file had an invlid name and was therefore being deleted, though.  Ah well, that'll teach me not to do a proper backup.

Thanks for all your suggestions.

[Thorin]

Oh, and I finally diagnosed this by starting in Safe Mode after clearing the ESCD and finding the machine hanging after loading the driver Mup.sys.  There's an incredible amount of information out there about Mup.sys.  Unfortunately all the suggestions are different.

[Adams]

If it's hanging on the mup.sys...  I think you will need to either try and repair your install or I think it's suggests pressing a key combination to bypass loading that file.

I cannot remember. Sounds like the filesystem got corrupted. If you have another computer put the drive into that computer and copy everything you need off of it. Then Try a chkdsk /f on that drive.

It might fix it or make it worse. But at least you will get a backup.

[Thorin]

Yah, I did get it fixed by running chkdsk