My computer is "hanging."

[immoderate]

I'm seeing the hourglass fairly frequently. I believe this is a matter of cleanup.

I'm running XP SP2 with 640 MB and a Pentium 4. I scan with AVG every day and use Ad-Aware and Spybot regularly. I've tried Easy Cleaner, not much help, and the demo version of Registry Mechanic, seemed to help a bit. I'm on severe budget restriction so I want to try to get this cleaned up for free, if possible.

The computer hangs when I play Flash movies, and scrolling and typing are delayed. The Registry Mechanic does a partial cleanup, and says I have system problems.

What should I try next?

Thanks.

Edit to add: Sometimes it seems to be responding perfectly -- then I click on a link and it goes to the hourglass.

--IMM

[Duer 157099]

1. I don't think it's a cleanup issue

Although, when RegMech said you have system problems, did it specify what they were?

I'm having similar issues with one of my machines, and it's squeaky clean -- I'm suspecting that it might be related to some recent update to AVG, Spybot, AdAware. I'm still trying to pin it down.

For example, when you have programs such as AVG, SpybotS&D running in the background, monitoring your system, there are settings that could possibly be adjusted to affect this -- like which types of files have to be scanned, and how thoroughly. This is what I'm suspecting is hogging the CPU/RAM. If you can, you might want to try running something like System Internals Process Monitor and see if you can watch what your system is trying to do when the hangups occur (SysInt suite of tools is free, very handy to have)

If anyone else has dealt with this already, more input would be appreciated.

[immoderate]

2. RegMech didn't specify. Just said that system was "unhealthy."

I would have to register (and Pay) to find out more. Under other circumstances, I might go for it, but things are tight now.

I'm not aware of Spybot or Ad-aware running any processes in the background. And AVG never used to cause any problems. It seems that it didn't happen "all at once" or I could pin it down to some software installation.

I'll check out SysInt. Thanks very much. :hi:

--IMM

[Duer 157099]

3. Here are some more suggestions

1) Go download, install and run this program (Advanced Windows Care, free):

http://www.iobit.com/advancedwindowscareper.html?Str=download

After you run it, take a look at what it wants to change before you tell it to go ahead - for example, if you have it do the complete check, it will also check what items are starting up at boot - and it's default seems to be to remove - so make sure you put anything into the "ignore" list that you want it to continue to run at startup (such as AVG, firewall, whatever)

There's a RAM tool built in (look in Tools section) that might be helpful too - it periodically frees up RAM - but you'll have to decide if it's worth keeping it running in the background (I don't)

There's also a defrag tool at the same site, worth picking up (Smart Defrag)

2) Go get RegVac (free trial) and run the Scan/Cleaner. Use the System Optimize tool, and then do the Registry Pack.

http://www.regvac.com/

3) Look at your options in any programs that run in the background, such as AVG (in AVG8 = Tools > Advanced Settings) In particular the "Resident Shield" is the one that does the continuous monitoring, so look at the settings - eg, is it scanning "all" files or just "infectable" files? - that sort of thing. Comodo Firewall/Defense has similar options to adjust - you can control how strong the analysis is, but tradeoff is time/system resources. Also check which of your programs might be set to either auto update or auto scan, because maybe that's what they're doing when your system slows down (I set all mine to manual, but you have to remember to do it)

4) Go to Black Viper's site and read enough to get familiar with what he's talking about regarding Services - this is a big area where system resources are squandered, and where security holes exist - so it's really worth learning about what the services are and which should or shouldn't be running. He provides some really helpful files (links below) but make sure you understand what they are and how to use them before applying them. I'm providing the direct links to the file downloads because sometimes they are hard to find on his site - so make sure you know what they are first by reading his site.

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/Archive/servicecfg.htm

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/customREG_Home.php

The only exception I take to his suggestions is the one about disabling System Restore. I won't do it because it's saved my butt on more than one occassion.

Some BV download links:

WinXPHome "Safe" Services Configuration file
http://www.blackviper.com/downloads/WinXP/Archive/!Safe_XP_Home_SP2_Start_v203.zip

WinXP(all) BlackViper Annotated Comments in Services Description
http://www.blackviper.com/downloads/WinXP/Archive/!BV_XP_SP2_Descriptions_Values_v201.zip

Home SP2 Safe Start
http://www.blackviper.com/downloads/WinXP/Archive/!Safe_XP_Home_SP2_Start_v203.zip

Pro SP2 Safe Start
http://www.blackviper.com/downloads/WinXP/Archive/!Safe_XP_Pro_SP2_Start_v203.zip

Home SP3 Default Start
http://www.blackviper.com/downloads/WinXP/Registry_Files/!Default_XP_Home_SP3_Start_v300.zip

Pro SP3 Default Start
http://www.blackviper.com/downloads/WinXP/Registry_Files/!Default_XP_Pro_SP3_Start_v300.zip

XP Services Descriptions - Default
http://www.blackviper.com/downloads/WinXP/Archive/!Default_XP_SP2_Descriptions_Values_v201.zip

XP Services Descriptions - BV annotated
http://www.blackviper.com/downloads/WinXP/Archive/!BV_XP_SP2_Descriptions_Values_v201.zip

[immoderate]

4. Thanks very much. I'll check those out.

Got some work ahead of me...

--IMM

[immoderate]

10. Advanced Windows Care appears to work very well.

Says it deleted a few thousand files. Wonder what they were. But I think the computer is working more like normal.

Let's see what it does tomorrow. (Can you tell that I've become skeptical of everything?)

Thanks again for your help.

--IMM

[Duer 157099]

12. Thousands? In what section?

The only one I've had thousands of hits in was the "Defense" one, which pretty much just innoculates your system from known malware, I believe.

I've got several more suggestions that I'll post about in detail tomorrow -- I found some more really helpful things and I want to document them for myself as well since I know I'll forget them soon enough.

But one thing I'll mention, but will detail later, has to do with your pagefile and defragging -- this could be causing problems.

Anyway, it's too late now to get into it, will post more tomorrow

[immoderate]

14. I think it was Security Defense.

--IMM

[trotsky]

5. If the above suggestions don't work...

Since you mention the hangs frequently occur when playing Flash vids, uninstall all Flash components from your system as per the following Adobe KB document:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_14157

I would also recommend installing Service Pack 3 for XP. Installing a service pack is about the closest you can come to a reinstall of Windows without actually having to do it. It refreshes most system files and makes sure you have compatible versions of DLLs and whatnot.

Also install IE 7 if you haven't already, and visit Windows Updates to make sure you've installed everything available for your system - including any hardware drivers it recommends.

Then go get Mozilla Firefox (http://www.getfirefox.com) and use it for your default browser!

Once that is all done, go back to http://www.adobe.com and reinstall Flash.

Good luck!

[immoderate]

6. Thanks for the info.

Is this the best place on the web, or what?

--IMM

[immoderate]

7. That helped a lot.

Report for any that may have the same problems...

It appears that I already had most of the Win updates already. I reloaded Flash. Ran great in IE, but crashed Firefox. I reloaded Firefox. Now it's working much better. It still hesitates occasionally, but typing and scrolling are much better, so there seems to be more to do. At least it's tolerable now.

Thanks, trotsky. :hi:

--IMM

[trotsky]

8. Good to hear!

The thing with I.T. is, you just have to stick around and eventually you figure out a shotgun approach to every problem that just by the law of averages ends up solving it somehow. ;-)

[immoderate]

9. Yeah, I'm probably a victim of multiple causalities.

Who knows what I fixed? I'm mostly glad that the keyboard and scrolling are much better. I'm a slow typist and I had to hang around a few seconds to see if I actually hit the right keys.

I usually work in a training environment where the drives are re-imaged daily. I know that would work. But I'd have a lot of software to reload.

Thanks again.

--IMM

[Gore1FL]

11. You might want to do a google search on

autoruns systinternals

and delete the excess crap your PC is running at login.

[Duer 157099]

13. BTW, forgot to ask: have you tried disabling Spybot S&D

and see if the problem persists?

For some reason SS&D seems to have become much more of a resource hog than it ever used to be, so I've stopped using it - see what happens if you disable it upon startup.

Or, run SysInt's Process Explorer to monitor your system resources in real time, to see what process is using the CPU during those hangs