Computer Problem

[enriya]

Hi, I am new here and i hope this is the right place to put this. I have a HP Pavilion DV5000 and well last week i was running a full system scan from Norton on my computer. Well Norton froze so i had to force quit it. When i turned my computer on the next day it took me a hour and a half to start it up. It used to take only like 10 minutes. Also now i can't listen to music with out it freezing, or watch videos, or even surf the web. I talked to HP and they said i should update my RAM but, i don't think that will work. I tried Virus Scans, Ad ware scans, Defraging it, system restart, The cleaners thing. Everything you could think of and nothing works. Does anyone have any idea about what to do to make it go faster and not freeze as much. If so i would appreciated it much. Thanks

[cluberti]

Well, 10 minutes to boot is a little slow, and the freezing and lockups you speak of are also not normal behavior. What OS is this, and how frequently are you able to run complete virus, spyware, and malware scans on the machine? Also, how frequently is the hard disk defragmented?

Oh, and how much RAM is in the box?

[enriya]

its windows Xp and my RAM is 384 and i just did a virus scan, defraging, and ad ware scan today.

[cluberti]

OK, so with all of those things done, that much RAM shouldn't be problematic.

What happens if you boot into safe mode? How long does that take?

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

ok first off, is the computer slow but stable or slow and unstable?

by stable i mean:

If you attempt to launch a program, the PC eventually does it (even if it doesn't perform well once launched)

The system does NOT lock up (will freeze at times but always seems to catch up eventually)

No BSODs/Unannounced reboots

If that is the case, then the problem may not be hardware related but something on the system is bogging it down

open task manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc)

Click the processes tab

Check Show processes from all users at the bottom

You should see 4 different users listed, NETWORK SERVICE, SYSTEM, LOCAL SERVICE, and your username

Sort the columns by CPU and look to see what is highest on the list. If all is well, then the 'System Idle process' should be the highest, if not, then if the process that is higher than System Idle is running as your username, you should try ending process on it and see what happens

Sort the columns by Mem usage and look to see what is highest on the list. If anything is using WAAAY more memory than anything else and is running as your username, you should try ending process on it and see what happens

If nothing there looks out of place, post a log from HiJackThis! and well look it over to see it you have any unwanted programs on the system.

If the system is NOT stable then i would run http://www.memtest86.com/ youll have to download the ISO and burn it to cd (prolly on another PC) that will test your RAM to see if it is the problem

[D_block]

10 minutes to boot is not slow, its the worst, that pc should be taken out back an shot ... lol

your best try is to boot in safe mode and see what boot time u get then u will at leat have an idea if its software or hard ware causing this problem

[A.T.M]

If it was me,

1stly disconnect from the internet.

Re boot in safe mode.

Check whats eating your CPU. Do a virus scan.

Norton is rubbish, i wouldnt recommend that at all.

I run 4 laptops and 3 pcs with avg and lavasoft - both are free. Norton eats the cpu and makes everything run so slow.

I would re format and start again. Once you have re formatted, do not do anything until you have some virus protection on there like AVG. Also make sure you have your firewall set up correctly.

Just remember, as soon as you are on the net and you are not protected, you will get virus's and spyware.

Hope that helps and good luck.

[data recovery]

http://www.chilyregistrycleaner.com

[mara-]

I agree with A.T.M, you should definitely get rid of Norton. If you can, buy NOD32, if not use AVG. Also, get your self a copy of Spybot-S&D! and scan your computer with it too.

Cheers