PC Running Slow.

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13 Jul 2005
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For some reason lately my pc is running slowly and I can't imagine why. The HDD are extremely noisy and it just doesn't seem to be as fast as it was.

Specs:

Processor - AMD Athlon™ 64 Dual X2 4400+
Motherboard - Asus A8N SLI Premium
Graphics Card - BFG GeForce 7800
Memory - OCZ 1GB DDR 400MHZ PC3200 DDR EL Platinum Edition Dual Channel Revision 2
Hard drive - Seagate Barracuda 80 GB 7200 RPM
Hard Drive 2 - Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7200 RPM

HDD 1 - 22/74 GB Left
HDD 2 - 121/232 GB left

Asus PC Probe says 42% percent of RAM ultilised.

The one thing that could be causing thr slowdown could be utorrent which is uploading n d/l arround 10 files.



Any suggestions how to speed up including anything I should buy.
 
Soldato
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Only thing I can suggest is running lots of antivirus and antispyware scans and laying off on the torrents a little, the hardware is perfectly fine.
 
Soldato
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Rubbish, i'm running 2 torrent programs, MSN, webpage streaming Radio1, anti-virus, and i can still manage BF2 at full sets.

My boot times are shocking, and i won't go there now, but its likely due to the crap load of software and games i have installed.

Your CPU is still better then mine, card is on par.

Only difference i see is ram, but i can't see it making that much a difference in general use.

Defrag, AV scan, spyware scan....... clear out temp files etc, defrag again.... and so on.

I defrag after every install and uninstall, so that keeps everything minus boot and shutdown times running sweet.
 
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Only thing I can suggest is running lots of antivirus and antispyware scans and laying off on the torrents a little, the hardware is perfectly fine.

I use norton system works and Kaspersky

Defragment the drives?

This has been done a few days ago.

Rubbish, i'm running 2 torrent programs, MSN, webpage streaming Radio1, anti-virus, and i can still manage BF2 at full sets.

My boot times are shocking, and i won't go there now, but its likely due to the crap load of software and games i have installed.

Your CPU is still better then mine, card is on par.

Only difference i see is ram, but i can't see it making that much a difference in general use.

Defrag, AV scan, spyware scan....... clear out temp files etc, defrag again.... and so on.

I defrag after every install and uninstall, so that keeps everything minus boot and shutdown times running sweet.

I can play any game I own almost in Full specs but when I try to open files or folders it takes ages.
 
Soldato
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Surrey - UK
Use the windows System File Checker, might have a corruption on the windows install.

Windows is fine for me, depending what i ask it to do of course..

XP Pro SP2 here.
 
Soldato
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Yeah the symantec stuff has been getting worse and worse.

Mcafee has slowly got worse to.

I've switched to NOD32 now, and i can run any game without a performance hit. Mcafee and Norton (when i had them) slowed down the system. Up till NOD32 i've opted for only having the AV installed when i'm downloading something that could potentially be a virus, so not that often. Now though, run games, anything and keep the AV on.

Thats not to say for certain your problem is due to system works, since you only have problems in windows, coz personally i've only noticed lag in games with an AV running.

Worth a shot though, try removing anything you added between when it was faster and when it became sluggish. If that doesnt pan out i'd seriously consider wether the windows install is corrupt or having issues to some degree.
 
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I only use norton system works occasionally. Any software that does what systemworks does?

And how do I do a windows system file check
 
Suspended
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I've just done a fresh install on the sysem in my sig, boot up/login took about 1 minute, HD churning away...now boots <10 seconds. I think because I installed SB Live, Creative, KX drivers, .NET, ATI drivers....removed the SB and went back to onboard, using Omega drivers instead.
 
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Why is no one else thinking its a dying drive? If its 'extremely noisy' aswell as being slow i would say it was a hardware fault, as i know of there are no software configurations that affect the noise a harddrive makes. And defrag all ya want but im sure it wont make it any quieter.
 
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My DVD RW just dyed my HDD better not!

And I really dont want to a fresh install my pc to me is set up perfectly
 
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Ive had that before when i had a asus board. Uninstall chipset drivers and then reinstall them and that worked everytime for me. Never found out what the cause was but has never happened on my dfi board
 
Associate
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Ok installed the nVidea chipset drivers, is has improved but is still slow.

StarForce copy protection, all my games are d/led
 
Soldato
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Clean said:
What software woul dbe good to anaylise and rate how my cpu, ram, gfx, hdd etc are all running?
To monitor, Speedfan. Analyse maybe SiSoftware Sandra Lite 2007 & CPU-Z ;)

Also, changed from SystemWorks to the excellent TuneUp Utilities 2006. Also consider investing in Diskeeper 10.

Other programs you should/must have installed (& run/update/etc regularly) are:
  • CCleaner
  • SpywareBlaster
  • Windows Defender
  • Lavasoft Ad-Aware
All freebies which can be found here :cool:
 
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