I have had this pc for a few years now and there is a lot of spy ware and virus's and basically everything to slow down my computer I’m looking for someone to help to get it up to full speed like the day we brought it for free.... I hope If you good at speeding up pc's then contact me (contact details below) We are running on windows xp home sp2 And we got Norton as our virus scanner Our computer is made by Packard bell its the I media edition they made a few years ago also Details: Msn: andyflatt_23@hotmail.com Yahoo: andyflatt_23@yahoo.co.uk Aim: andyflatt1058411@aol.com Thanks hope to hear from you soon

Reply

That's your problem. Norton Antivirus is not only a terrible virus scanner (92 percent detection rate), but it is also a resource hog. Don't believe me? I found this post on another forum where this guy tested Norton along with a variety of other virus scanners and found that, surprisingly, Norton and McAfee were not the best virus scanners. Forum: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cf...word1=antivirus

I'd recommend that you switch to Kaspersky as your virus scanner because it takes up less resources and it has the best detection rate (99% on both web sites). Updating with Kaspersky is also a breeze - everything is downloaded immediately as one file instead of one million files which makes your life as easy as possible.

Also, what is your processor speed, processor model, hard drive usage, and RAM (MB)?

One last thing, press ctrl+alt+del right now, and tell me how many processes you are using. That number should be at the bottom left corner of the Windows Task Manager.

 

 

 

Reply

i'd say you need to defragment your hard drive. that can help. also check your program files to see what applications you don't need or use anymore, then uninstall them, just to free up some space (makes defragmenting less time-consuming too).

Reply

duh!

re-format... if you dun mind your data..

Reply

ok well i know that this is going to be a real pain but i segest that you backup all of your data (not everything just the stuf that you dont want to lose or cant install again. download all of the updates that you will need for your new computer and any programs (fire walls, antivirus etc) then go ahead and reformatt your computer. this will probably take some time so if you dont really want to do it then you could just do a unattended install ( extract deploy.cab to you hdd becore you reformatt (its on the windows XP professional CD) and then run the wizard.) this wizard creates a disk which automaticly answers all of the questions that the windows has while installing. one you have reformatted install all of your drivers for everything and then antivirus. one this is done get updating windows and your antivirus stuf. remember to turn automatic updates on on everything and that should keep everything running smoothly. after this you can install all of your other programs and restore your files. it may be a good idea to set sceduled tasks to scan yhour computer etc. the main this with computers is that a little maintainance saves you heaps of time. defrag regulary, keep everything updated and scan for spyware and viruses regulary. and whatever you do try not to install any P2P programs because this is like putting a signe above your computer saying "look give me viruses um unprotected"

im not sure what you have done in the past but if you dont want to use that option then you could try using a backup point which is from when you first bought the computer. you may have one or you may not, if you do just backup your stuf and roll back. this is probably the easiest way but if you cant do this then i would segest a fress start and a re-formatt.

Reply

Hi again sleepy,
sounds like you've got a real mess..
First, do your AV < get a new one as Norton is bad
Next, run Adaware
& Spybot Search & destroy
If this doesn't clean it you can get more specialized tools to help.
There are links to all kinds of free tools at my website "links" page.
Hope this helps,
RGPHNX

Reply

If I had this kind of problem, I would just format my computer (at least the OS partition). Before you do so, make sure you backup data first.

Reply

get adaware for your spyware problem.
i use NOD32 as my A/V, uses only 10MB total of memory.
my firewall is from Tiny, and i've not ahd anything get through yet.

Reply

Packard Bell still makes computers? It must be older than just "few" years. I wonder if the processor and the hard drive can handle XP? I am assuming that you upgraded to XP from the original Packard Bell shipped OS.

If it's a true speed you are looking for, perhaps a new computer is in order. You can now pick up a brand new computer package under $600 USD from Dell.com. I can't even build a computer on that price these days. More information at Dell.com.

Cheers.

Reply

If it were my computer, then this is what I would do:-

1. Uninstall Norton and find a new anti virus software. I used to have Norton on my compter but soon removed it because I found it was using too many resources, making my computer slower, and was very buggy. I can't remember how many times I had to re-install it because it just wasn't working properly. In the and I just gave up and found a new anti virus program.

2. Download Ad-Aware from www.lavasoft.de and run a scan with that. It will find any spyware on your computer and you will be able to delete it. Once you've done that, another good program to get is SpywareBlaster from www.javacoolsoftware.com/ . It stops any spyware from even being loaded onto your computer to begin with.

3. Defragment your hard drive. This will tidy up and re-arrange things on your hard drive so that programs will be able to run faster.

4. If all that doesn't work, I suggest reformatting your hard drive. This means completely wiping everything and starting all over again from scratch. Before doing this, just be sure to backup any files that you don't want to lose because everything will be erased.

5. If even that doesn't work, I would look at getting a whole new computer. Or, if possible, at least getting more RAM put into the computer you have now. That should speed things up a little.

Hope this is of some use to you. Good luck!

Reply