Bizarre Comp. Slowdown, Desperately Need Help

m1lesteg

m1lesteg

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So recently, my computer has developed a debilitating problem of slowing down to the point that it is unusable every now and then.

It's most prominent when I boot up. It takes about 20-30 minutes from the time my desktop appears to the time my start menu and everything is functional. It seems like the computer is processing something that's taking up a whole lot of resources, but looking in the Task Manager shows nothing but a lot of free CPU power.

Ocasionally I'll get an error that says Automatic Updater has crashed, and then an application error from wuauclt.exe, and once I terminate the program, everything runs smoothly for a period of time. This all leads me to think it's something wrong with Windows Updater, and the computer keeps trying to do something with it.

I've run Adaware and Norton several times, to no avail. If this is a virus, it's one that I can't detect.

So, what's the deal? Is there some way I can uninstall and reinstall updater, or disable it altogether? At this point, I'm considering a format. Or is this some other problem I'm missing?
 
There's a new 'best anti-spyware' program in town:

"Sunbelt Software CounterSpy 1.0 (left, $20) is the most effective remover of spyware, according to an April 2005 PC World review. When used with the free HijackThis program, PC World says the two apps caught 100% of the nuisances tested."

CounterSpy is a paid software, though it looks like you can download an 'evaluation version', which I plan to do on my home computer.

Here is the permalink to the entire issue of WSN
http://windowssecrets.com/comp/050414/
you can google for CounterSpy.

Microsoft/Giant antispyware is supposed to be pretty good as well, but definitely give Counterspy a shot.

Checkdisk/Scandisk; Defrag.

Hit your Add/Remove programs and uninstall anything you're not using.

Turn off the Automatic Scheduled Event thing.

Go to run and run "msconfig", and check the Startup tab, see if there's anything running on startup you don't want [for some reason, my brand new PC runs some AOL System Tray Loader on boot, I don't want anything AOL related on my machine.]
 
go to download.com and download "RegClean". you can use a different pc since the file is small enough to fit on a floppy. regclean, ad-aware, & spybot (in advanced mode) usually cure all my woes.
 
[quote name='onetrackmind']i also recommend hijackthis[/QUOTE]

I never recommend hijackthis to people that are asking for help. If they need help finding it hijackthis is too dangerous for them to use.
 
Alright, I've turned off automatic updates, went through msconfig and disabled anything I was unfamiliar with on startup, ran norton and adaware, and nothing has changed. I'm (very slowly) installing Spybot to see if that would pick anything up, but at this point I'm convinced a format will be the only solution.
 
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