Fairly new PC slowing down.

JamesEM

JamesEM

Hi guys/gals, :)

18 month old PC with decent spec (for what I'm doing...one market, no tick charts, 3-9 charts open at a time etc) seems to be grinding to a halt. Ridiculous delay in opening applications and general response time.

I've tried going to a technician and he cleaned the machine for me, re-installed everything and that improved things for several months but now it's worse than ever!

I have limited knowledge where computers are concerned and I'm just wondering what the best route is to take. Not interested in just buying a new PC just yet but would rather learn some best practice to get the most out of what I've got.

Any advice??

PS CPU fan recently became stuck on 100% (ie noisey!) which I'm now manually controlling using SpeedFan.
 
Windows OS?

I think the first think you need to find out is where did all the CPU cycles go. Which means: what application, which process, then it may give you some clue.

If Windows: On the task bar, right click and "Start Task Manager".

Under Task Manager:
Tab "Performance", what is the overall CPU Usage. Is it constantly at high (e.g. over 30%)? If it is idling, it would be under 5%.
Tab "Processes", sort it under "CPU". The top line should be the one taking most of the CPU cycles. What is the name of that process (and the top 3). That would give you a clue on why the computer is so busy.
 
Make sure that security scans and backups and such are scheduled for hours when you aren't using the computer...
 
Quote from Bolimomo:

Windows OS?

I think the first think you need to find out is where did all the CPU cycles go. Which means: what application, which process, then it may give you some clue.

If Windows: On the task bar, right click and "Start Task Manager".

Under Task Manager:
Tab "Performance", what is the overall CPU Usage. Is it constantly at high (e.g. over 30%)? If it is idling, it would be under 5%.
Tab "Processes", sort it under "CPU". The top line should be the one taking most of the CPU cycles. What is the name of that process (and the top 3). That would give you a clue on why the computer is so busy.
More...

Thanks for the reply Bolimomo :)

Yes, Windows XP home edition.

I've tried to look at CPU usage- it's very low..0-2%. It'll jump briefly to as high as 30% ish when clicking around, opening documents and such.

Under processes these are the top three:

"system"
"spoolsv.exe"
"avp.exe"

These change slightly with the top two remaining were they are.

If I sort my memory usage...

"javaw.exe" 286,932 KB
"soffice.bin" 126,892 KB
"firefox.exe" 90,356 KB
 
Check the CPU temp, the fan may be speeding up trying to cool it because of deteriorated thermal grease. Thermal grease can deteriorate and gets worse with heat.
 
Quote from JamesEM:



Under processes these are the top three:

"system"
"spoolsv.exe"
"avp.exe"
More...

system should be normal. But with spoolsv.exe

From this page:
The spooler service is responsible for managing spooled print/fax jobs. Spooling allows you to print in the background without your computer being tied up.

Note: The spoolsv.exe file is located in the folder C:\Windows\System32. In other cases, spoolsv.exe is a virus, spyware, trojan or worm! Check this with Security Task Manager.

Do you so a lot of printing? If you don't, then it could be a suspect of virus. You may want to so some virus screening and such.

http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/spoolsv.exe.html
 
Try downloading and running SPECCY at http://www.piriform.com/speccy

It's free. When you start the program, click on "Summary." It will tell you what hardware you have. Under each piece of hardware, will will tell you the current temperature. If your machine is running hot, it will slow down to protect itself. Everything will run slower. See if anything is too hot.

Bob
 
Sounds like a virus to me. If not a virus then most likely, or if i could say certainly, a software problem.

It could also be a slow, damaged or highly fragmented hard drive. It happened to me a long time ago. It also depends if your charting software caches data frequently to disk - in that case a fast HD is needed, but first try defragmenting it 4 or 5 times in a row to get it perfect. If you can set it to not cache data as frequently, that might also help.

If the CPU temp is low, that's not it.
 
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