Computer All of a Sudden Going Slowly

[Mr Unoriginal]

Computer just started acting up this afternoon. It seems to be loading everything more or less the same speed, but it is hanging up for less than a second every 10 seconds or so. The mouse will roll over something and won't change to the correct icon, or when I load a game that once ran fine, the mouse will seem stuck and only change possitions every 5 seconds or so.

I haven't installed anything new, I ran spybot and adaware and didn't find anything unusual. When I go to the task manager and check processes, there is nothing strange running, but the taskmanager.exe is using up to 45% of the system resources occasionally.

Any ideas what it might be? I am about ready to restore my computer to yesterday when there weren't these problems. Would there be any reason not to do that?

[bmulligan]

There's never a reason for the task manager to take up more than 2-3% of process time for any reason. Something must be running that you can't see.

Do you have automatic updates turned on? An XP update can routinely take up 40-50% while installing but that wouldn't be for a long periods of time. There could be all kinds of crap that installed itself onto your toolbar or at startup.

Go to MS and download this utility:
www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/ProcessExplorer.mspx

It will show you everything that's running. Lookup the ones that you don't know and kill them if they don't need to be running or are unnecessary, like wuaulct.exe, alg.exe, cidaemon.exe, cisvc.exe, and countless others - and be careful. I have a real problem with programs that never clear their memory after the programs have ended like Rhapsody's exe, rhaplayer.exe and Lexmark printer utilities and ATI's mass jumble of memory hog TSR's. Adobe Acrobat reader has got to be the most annoying one of the bunch and can bring most computers to a grinding crawl more often than not. I hate that freaking program.

If you want to kill processes permanently, Google and download HijackThis. I use it to kill annoying shit like Quickplayer and other crap that always squats itself after running. There's all kinds of crap you can setup to never run by right clicking My Computer/Manage/Services and Applications/Services too if you're running XP. Sorry to be so long winded if you already know all this stuff, I'm bored and can't sleep.

[RedvsBlue]

It needs an energy drink.

[CappyCobra]

Check the event viewer for any clues Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Event Viewer.Maybe the hard drive is starting to corrupt? The event viewer should tell you as long as you have S.M.A.R.T enabled on your drives. Also check to see if Ultra DMA is turned on for the drive in Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager>IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers>Primary or Secondary controller>Advanced Settings.

Come to think of it, XP automatically drops it down to PIO mode (from UDMA) if it detects X amount of errors. You may want to just try removing the IDE controller in device manager and reboot and have XP redetect the controllers. If it works then you should be good. If it works and then eventually goes back, then replace the IDE cable to your hard drive.

Good way to tell if your hard drive is performing as it should speed-wise is a program called HDtach. Very useful little program.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/HDTach_d672.html