PC has gone very slow

[jmorgan]

Not mine, I use a Mac. But my parents has gone into slow mode. An old 450 mhz running 98. All operations are very slow as compared to a short while ago. Even opening Word for that version. Somtimes go and make a cup of tea before able to use etc. Virus check done. Defraged. It seems to be working as if several programs are trying to run in the background thus slowing it down?
Any thoughts? Also no quick response from me as I have to relay instructions to parents who just use it and are not up with how it works.....like me.


Cheers.

[Big Al.]

Do a "ctrl alt del" to see what's running.

Also how many progs (icons) have they got open in the system tray, down in the bottom right hand corner?

[Ultimasimon]

Empty cookies, and do a defrag.

[squirrelz]

Backup anything vital just in case the hard disk is on its way out.

[ew_topcat]

check ram and if this is ok, replace hard drive.

[jmorgan]

"ctr alt del" showed 4 programs running that are not required (I think) Explorer is one of them. He closed them down and the computer restarted.....

Tried to get them to back up and a complete reformat but seems to be an alien concept to them

Will try the rest tomorrow. They are a bit busy at the moment.

Cheers all.

[dragstar]

tell your Dad to stop looking at porn

[simpo two]

squirrelz said:

Backup anything vital just in case the hard disk is on its way out.

On a PC that age/spec/OS I'd say 'back up anything vital, throw the rest away and get a new one'! No point struggling on with W98 IMHO.

[jmorgan]

dragstar said:

tell your Dad to stop looking at porn

What's that then?..........


Simpo two, plan b in a couple of months. Just trying to keep using it until then.

[simpo two]

jmorgan said:

Simpo two, plan b in a couple of months. Just trying to keep using it until then.

Only two months of hell to go then!

[arcturus]

Check that no 'Spyware' has crept onto the system.

I went to a customer the other day who was complaining that his year old machine had slowed right down. Indeed it was like wading through treacle!!

I found 111 bits of spyware on his machine and once they were removed it flew like the wind again.

Go to www.lavasoft.de and download AdAware 6 - it is free for home use. Install it, do a scan and see what comes up. You have nothing to lose even if it finds nothing.

Dave

[hut49]

A couple of additional comments:

when you use the defrag option in programs/accessories/system boot up the computer in safe mode before you do this. It makes it happen a lot quicker otherwise you risk all sorts of unidentified programs writing to the disk causing the process to keep restarting

also use SpyBot in addition to AdAware. They seem to find some registry entries and files that the other doesn't. They are both free and easy to download

Check also that Indexing hasn't been switched on since this can really comsume processing resources (I think Win 98 has this but can't recall - you should find it in Administrative tools in the Control Panel)

[simpo two]

arcturus said:

Go to www.lavasoft.de and download AdAware 6 - it is free for home use.

Second that - I did that recently to get rid of some odd things and it was excellent.

[jmorgan]

Cheers all. Taking notes as I will have to try to get around there sometime this week. Instructions over the phone not working too well.

[bga]

simpo two said:

squirrelz said: Backup anything vital just in case the hard disk is on its way out. On a PC that age/spec/OS I'd say 'back up anything vital, throw the rest away and get a new one'! No point struggling on with W98 IMHO.

No need to chuck it if you are doing basic stuff, I've just loaded win98 onto a spare p166 w/approx 60M ram and it's fine for basic internet + wordprocessing, only fractionally slower than my IBM T22 when visiting PH over dialup.

[jmorgan]

Managed to get around the folks house. Downloaded the Adaware and threw up quite a few files that were promptly quarantined, mostly cookies. Restarted and still slow, but only now on some applications. ie opening control panel (mac term, can't remember what its called on the pc. The settings bit). some applications take around 30 seconds to start, you click the icon and nothing seems to happen, no disk activity, no hour glass pointer. Try to do something after clicking and before the program starts and all you can do is move the pointer.

Did control alt del and identified the programs running, 6, and they mostley tied up with the system tray or programs needed in the background.

I did see something relating to a boot sector virus on start up but the screen changed before I could note it all down. It mentioned also "chipawayvirus" but norton with an up to date checker shows nothing.



Ho hum. Think I will tell them to hang on till they get a new one then reformat the thing.

Thanks for the info all.