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DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

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User complaints are minimal when new PCs are rolled out. They start up quick, and programs seem to open in a snap. But over time, users begin to notice that their system is slow or that it hangs up often. While the possibilities for system slowdown are endless, this download identifies 10 common troubleshooting areas you should examine first before you suggest to management that it’s time for an upgrade.

Download and review this list:
http://techrepublic.com.com/5138-10877-5878531.html

Join this ongoing discussion and let us know if this download provides helpful information and if there’s anything we can do to improve the document’s format or content. You can also share you favorite tips and tricks for troubleshooting a slow PC.

Topic

My top troubleshooting list

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

my hit list include

1. running msconfig or registry
going to following keys and deleteing few useless files from here
hklm\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\run
hklm\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\runonce
hklm\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\runservices
and start > programs > startup

2. Services.msc | for disabling the services which i dont need

3. Uninstalling the software which are not used/required

4. Looking for all weird process running

5. chkdsk /r and defrag

5. Page file/virtual memory

Keeping clean!!!

In reply to My top troubleshooting list

This sounds less than technical..but a good machine is a clean machine.I notice throughout the years MS is less likely to crash and hang if you just simply keep it clean.Start with your browser,use a good quality browser not necessarly the one that came with it!!Set the ceche to empty when closing,empty cookies,names etc (this is good security practice anyway)On Ms undertake virus and malware scans once a week.Clean out junk especially after loading and uninstalling new programes.Failing this get Unix!!

Call me skeptical…

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

but why is it that all these “things to know about” ALWAYS come in 10’s??? This leaves me with the feeling that, either, there are more and I have been short-changes, or that there are less, but someone got it in their head that it was a brilliant idea to always pad it up to 10, or I am a moron and believe that you guys always come up with only and exactly 10 each time!!! By all means I am not saying that the article is bad or not helpful, but… 10? not 9? not 13, not 17?

What about the #1 Problem!!!!

In reply to Call me skeptical…

It looks like the article was written several years ago. SPYWARE & VIRUSES are the number 1 and 2 reasons for a slow P/C, and they are not even on the list!!!!! How Sad

You got it!!

In reply to What about the #1 Problem!!!!

You posted it before I did. But I agree! Viruses and spywareare the FIRST things we check for.

second

In reply to You got it!!

you failed to mention the second and third and so on, please do

old but updated slightly

In reply to What about the #1 Problem!!!!

talking about WinNT as much as it does dates the article, and then a few random mentions of XP without really going into it.

FACT, there would be a different list for nt, 2k, and XP as they all have their own quirks.

The bad thing about much of the malware and viruses out there now, it more and more becomes the only way to “fix” the system is to format. Sure, you can get the virus off, but it is so unstable afterwards that you would have been best to go straight to the format.

Should be added to the list

In reply to What about the #1 Problem!!!!

You’re correct. Spyware and viruses should be on the list.

Thanks for the feedback.

Spyware and viruses are now Number 1

In reply to What about the #1 Problem!!!!

I’ve added a spyware and viruses section to the list.

Thanks to everyone for their feedback.

#3 reason for a slow PC

In reply to What about the #1 Problem!!!!

Along with SPYWARE & VIRUSES comes the user not cleaning their machines defrag as well as disk clean. I have heard that you only need to defrag your drives or disk clean once a month. I have been cleaning and defraging my old machines over the years daily, so far not a problem with speed and access. As a user you have to tune your machines just like a car. Norton and McAfee also slow down computers, although a must have anti-virus software these two seem to really slow machines down. Also in the systems managment utilities all of the managing programs can cause system slowdown. I have personally shut a lot of that logging stuff down and my machine has raped access and loadtime. Forget dialup and get DSL, system registry programs can be tweaked. There are several ways to tweak your system. Software programs that virtually do it for you. If you have questions or need good free downloads for systems tweaking. salinascjohn@aol.com

Spyware , slow antivirus programs

In reply to #3 reason for a slow PC

It is amazing how successfull and thoughtfull the spyware development industry is.
Imagine if this energy was devoted to the good of mankind.
One secretary who means well can download a spyware riddled program which can slow down your whole network.
And try to diagnose this.
It is cat and mouse with updates and the spyware removal programs trying to find and keep up with the onslaught.
Users will insist they are doing scans however many are just unwaware of the essence of updates of the spyware removal program lists.
If possible include automated spyware scans with automated updates on network user computers.
As well it is a matter of personal choice but often it is better to have a less mainstream antivirus program installed.
The virus programmmers know who their novice base who they can target with impunity – try Norton. As well as least the retail Symantec versions seem to have the ability to slow older computers to a crawl.

wwww.tratfor.com

granted.

In reply to What about the #1 Problem!!!!

what are your number 3 through 10 choices for a slow operation?

Interesting comment

In reply to Call me skeptical…

Alphonse,

You raise an interesting point. I think our preference for 10-item lists stems from the natural human inclination toward the number 10. I assume this comes the fact that we have 10 fingers, 10 toes, and use a number system based around 10.

Let me assure you however, that we don’t pad our lists or cut critical items to fit within the 10 tips limit.

Top Ten

In reply to Interesting comment

It’s all Dave Letterman’s fault.
Get a rope.

GOOD POINT, ALPHONSE

In reply to Call me skeptical…

Wish I had thought of that, lists DO always seem to come in 10’s. 20’s. Very good point. Here’s to odd numbers!

11

In reply to Call me skeptical…

This download actually had 11; even though it was billed as having 10. 😛

deleting services in registry

In reply to Call me skeptical…

How does a “non-pro” know which services can be deleted?

Not from the registry

In reply to deleting services in registry

You just disable them using services.msc
Heres the controversial Black Viper list
http://www.dead-eye.net/WinXP%20Services.htm

XP-antispy

In reply to deleting services in registry

This should give you a head start

do you not have ant useful tips to offer?

In reply to Call me skeptical…

i will gladly accept any and all tips that you may have regardless of number.

About overheating

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

How hot is too hot?

today, scanners that use a laser to check temps are affordable and easy to use.

Using a gage like that, how hot is too hot?

What should a CPU top out at?
What should memory top out at?
What should a video cards CPU top out at?
How about the power supply?

I think another problem is people going over what their power supply can put out or maintain? What do you think and what process do you use to determine the size of supply you use? Or do you even look at this?

Good question

In reply to About overheating

How hot is to hot. The problem becomes each chip manufacture has a different max temp for there chips. I found this link that compares AMD and Intel. It is a bit older but gives some ideas.

http://www.casecooler.com/temandvolgui.html

Most likely you would really need to go to the manufactures web site, or see what documentation came with it, and that should give you the max temps.

Power supplies are another thing that can cause all kinds of headaches. They can sometimes be very difficult to troubleshoot, because when the system powers up you don’t think about a power supply being bad. But they can cause all kinds of problems.

I know there was a check list for trying to determine power supply wattage. Unfortunatly, I can’t find it now. When I build a new system, I put a 400W or higher power supply in. For now that seems to cover the wattage requirments. I use to think a 300 or 350W was good, but with the faster speeds, more wattage is needed. I also try to get a good power supply. I mainly use Antec cases with there power supplies. There power supplies have been rated pretty good. It is very important to get a decent power supply and not buy one because they are inexpensive.

70’C is the critical temperature

In reply to About overheating

above that the data in the cpu registers, ram memory can get corrupted and is not guaranteed anymore,because the leak current of the datacells(tiny capacitors) is very much temperature dependend

greetings from thailand 🙂

Temp files

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

What about the slowdown caused by those squillions of .TMP files?

If you’ve used XP

In reply to Temp files

what about the number of files stored in the prefetch folder.Look at this after a few months,and add up the total.As already mentioned,along with temp,and not forgetting index.dat,how much junk actually clutters up Windows?

Temp files

In reply to Temp files

Not just .tmp files, but the entire contents of the %temp% folder. When this folder fills up, strange things can occur with applications, and it also slows the boot process and general operation of the PC (more so with XP).

Another source of slowness? Celeron PC’s running XP being sold by retailers with only 256Mb Ram. Another 256Mb makes a huge difference!

and 256mb stick is only $60 odd NZ

In reply to Temp files

so cheap you’d be a fool not too!And so easy to install (i’m a kiwi too- nelson)

Temp folder with over 512 files

In reply to Temp files

If the currently logged in user’s temp folder has over 512 files in it there is a noticeable hit to performance. Clearing this instantly improves performance… (without a reboot)

Often overlooked…

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

Bill,

Another prevalent (and misunderstood) cause for slowness is a corrupted Offline Files Cache, which can cause WinLogon to consume most of the CPU cycles. The fix is usually to manually delete the cache and reboot.

XP-antispy

In reply to Often overlooked…

In the botom ther is an option to clean your cache. I found it handy to put my virtual memory on an other disk (in my case D:) Helps to keep C: less fragmented.

Most have no bearing on PC slow down

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

Most of the points made were good but have no bearing on the title about a PC slowing down over time, rather they reflect sudden changes. For example, memory errors don’t affect computer speed but rather cause freezing or outright BSODs. File system in use, one presumes, would be the same as it always was. Not many change their file system on the fly – and then the speed change would be a sudden change. How does the BIOS settings (not changed) or incompatible disk controller affect the PC gradually? Surely it would be an immediately obvious problem or no problem at all?

The one point that was not covered is the user’s Local Settings\Temp folder – as it fills up, applications (especially Office apps) spend more and more time fruitlessly reading through the mess of files.

Dust and wireless networks

In reply to Most have no bearing on PC slow down

As per jdclyde’s remark on overheating, dust buildup in the case can increase temperatures substantially. Some bottled air can take care of that. Also wireless networks can get pretty confused. I signed in on my wireless laptop the other day (I usaully use a hard-wired PC) and I was asked which of five wireless networks I wanted to sign on to. They were all my neighbors! (maybe I can ditch Comcast) 2.6ghz phones also complicate matters on wireless.

Again, over time

In reply to Most have no bearing on PC slow down

I agree, the basis of the article was factors to address for determining whether the PC needed to be replaced. I see one of the major items is a PC that was sold a couple years ago with XP and 128MB of RAM with only a 4GB HD that ran fine then but that was before you downloaded 2 service packs, installed Office 2003 and chose to keep the installation files, and started downloading music and videos.

I agree!

In reply to Most have no bearing on PC slow down

You hit the nail on the head.

also..

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

For a lot of home users, the addition of a lot of ‘auto-on’ software (icons in the system tray) consume a lot of memory and slow the system down (boot time and problems due to increased paging). Include in this list the addition of a wireless card and it’s attendent software.

Power management in Laptop

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

I have found that my Laptop an intel centrino was slow. The Speed increased significantly when in the power management options i selected always on instead of laptop/portable

Check for third party “Browsers” and “helpers”

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

First off, let me say after servicing thousands of Pc’s, I find that Microsoft has been forced to play into the hands of major ISP’s like AOL and Yahoo. These third party Browsers, used by AOL, Yahoo, and others, with their associated “spy-ware” and “anti-virus” Software, are little more than hacks. By far more of an issue to end users outside Corp. American than any listed in the story line.
Each time these IPS provided software’s are removed, systems begin to respond to the point they can be trouble shoot using real world tools like Spy-Bot. Browsers such as Mozilla are a far better event for the average end user. High speed connection “with out” any software from ISP’s should be not just suggested, but required, as with my company, it employee’s and it’s support customer base. If not used, a recurrence charge for a return trip will be required. When configured as above, not one case in a thousand has required a return visit. The issue seems to be that Yahoo and AOL along with other ISP’s allow “certain spammers”, with their popups, and worms, who have paid Aol, Yahoo, etc. for their “open ports” allowing entry into the users systems thru their third party browsers. Shut down use of third party browsers and save a customer issue. My complement to the author’s, fine list of issues, just not the most common one.

God bless creators of SPYWARE & VIRUSES…

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

They give us additional jobs, even sometimes really tough ones…

This is is very very old lets update it

In reply to God bless creators of SPYWARE & VIRUSES…

Truth fully I just read the year it was made.
Lets start fresh shall we? Easy to the hardest ones to fix last.
Things that will speed a pc up.

1. Memory (either more or faster clocked)
2. Fresh install of OS
3. Registry cleaners
4. Spyware cleaners
5. Antivirus
6. Putting swap file on second hard drive.
7. New hard drive.

I once did 1-6 and the pc was still slow as a 286. After I replaced the Hard Drive the whole system was quick & smooth as silk. Better than new!
IBM hard drives are known to be the best and least faulty. The worst ones are the ones bought and used as oem part by compaq and HP.

8. installing defrag program to keep fragmentation at a minimum.
9. Keeping the pc cool and clean of dust and pet hair.
10. TLC!!!! regular maintenance will keep your OS tip top shape.

Prefetch

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

My weather progarms got to tell me that I was not connected to the internet (DSL) when I booted. Then I deleted all files in the Prefetch folder and they have been happy since. Also I have worked on computers that a program that had been running fine all the sudden say not enought memory, and emptying the prefectch and rebooting made them run again.

Dual Swapfiles

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

Another way to speed-up any windows installation is to allways create a small partition on the hard drive. This is to be used for the SwapFile, internet cache files, and windows temp folders.
I find that by doing this there are a lot less read\writes to the main partition and this greatly reduces file fragmentation. This partition can also be used as cache space for programs like CD burning software or video editing software.

Aditionally, if possible it can be a boost to performance to install a second hard drive on a seperate controller channel than the first. With this configuration windows will be able to access swapfiles on both disks simultaneuosly, doubling the speed of swapfile access.

Reduce head travel

In reply to Dual Swapfiles

For performance, the goal of partitioning is to reduce head travel.

I see that as keeping 95%+ of disk activity within as short a range of head travel as possible. The material most often accessed includes page file, Temp, TIF (web cache), and OS and other code that is in constant use (as it often needs to be paged back into RAM).

So I leave all of that on C:, and move everything else out – starting with Videos, Pictures, Music, pre-installation downloads, large games and other apps I don’t use all the time, and so on. Then I keep C: small, so that no matter how fragmented it gets, the head travel will always be short.

There’s one exception to this “keep the pagefile in C:” rule, and that is where there is a second physical hard drive of similar speed – then I might put the pagefile there, so as to unlink head travel patterns. But locating frequently-accessed material (such as pagefile) on another partition on the same drive, is to force the heads to move all the way from one partition to the other, all the time. Yuk!

Avoid underfootware access to other partitions

In reply to Reduce head travel

If you do adopt the strategy of moving bulky material off C: so that most traffic can be concentrated within a short range of head travel, then you should stop the system fiddling about on these other partitions – otherwise some of the benefit will be lost.

Start with System Restore. In Vista, this is smart enough to exclude additional volumes and partitions, but the duuhfault in XP is to use SR with maximal disk capacity on every volume it sees – including external hard drives.

As I don’t have critical code running from my D:, E: amd F: hard drive volumes, I disable System Restore on these drives.

Next, make sure you don’t have indexers and thumbnailers banging away on these drives.

Messy Desk Syndrome

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

People who have messy desks usually have messy desktops. My users love to put everything on their desktop and then cuss about their slow machines. I mean folders, pictures, executables, movies, ad infinitium! I have preaching the sermon against doing this for years and to little avail.

With roaming profiles back into action it becomes even worse because a 20MB or more profile does not load on the different machine so they get a temp and then whatever they put on that desktop is lost when they log off. Then the cussin’ starts.

I want the System lads to make the profiles unable to save to the desktop but that has not happened yet. The only way to effect any behavorial change in this outfit is force it. If there was a Bull Headed political party most of my users would belong to it. 😉

Speed up virusscanner

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

Dear Bill,
I found that changing a setting in my MacAfee virusscanner greatly improved speed. For security reasons the virusscanner was set to scann ALL files. When I changed it to scan only the default files, the speed went up dramatically! Much more than I could ever achieve with other tweaks such as BIOS settings… And it is still safe!
Tinus van de Wouw
The Netherlands

Virus scanners and excluded file types

In reply to Speed up virusscanner

No, it may not be “still safe” if av’s assumptions on what file types pose risk are undermined by new exploits, etc. Conflicker refers, for example.

Scanning all file types can be so adverse (e.g. scanning large Access databases on every access) that you may want to drop the resident scanning to scan only the default “infectable” files, as you suggest – but this isn’t risk-free.

On the other hand, if I electively scan some material, I want ALL of it scanned (although at some extra risk than material may exploit the av scanner itself). So even if I set the resident scanner to scan only some file types, as per defaults, I’d set all elective scans to scan all file types.

Final av tip; make sure the av isn’t trying to “scan the whole system” while you are trying to work on it. Some scanners default to scanning the whole PC every day starting at 09:00 or so, which is certain to collide with your use of the machine.

Setting such scans to low priority (as such scanners may do) merely trades a short period of obviously slow performance to several hours of mild bleeah.

Housekeeping Windows for the Non-Techies

In reply to Virus scanners and excluded file types

Together with additional posts your .pdf addresses all key issues with windows, as amended.

For the benefit of the non-technical readers, I thought I might publish how I keep my ageing IBM NetVista running Windows at lightening speed, with never a system crash, never a hung page or blue screen and always fast boot up. I do it with all ‘set and forget’ schedules. I run high-end graphics, videos, download movies and music, play games, often with multiple applications running at same time. A Pentium M with CPU clock speed of 2.6 MHz and 3 gigs DDR. It never gets hot, never slows down. This is what I use:-

1. Anti-virus ware: Avira – rated amongst the top 5 in the world. Inexpensive. Has a freebie with no expiry date. Doesn’t impact on pc performance speeds while running in background. Usual drain when doing a full scan. Auto updates and scheduled scanning.

Foget McAffee and Norton – both are memory hogging, system slowing, bloatware juggernauts and slow down your system while on in the background and not even scanning.

2. Anti-Spyware: iOBit – Inexpensive. Also has a freebie with no expiry date. No memory issues, no impact on speed. Auto updates and scheduled scanning.

Forget Windows Defender. Is memory-hogging, system-crashing bloatware and not rated all that highly against better defence software.

3. PC Maintenance Tool: iOBit – Comes with full maintenance suite and raft of tools: registry and system cleaner (very safe, does not corrupt registry), system defragger, disk checker, disc cleaner, registry defragger. Optimizes Explorer, system file checker, start-up manager, easy access to registry, to device manager, update and back-up drivers, Context menu manager, cloned file finder, shortcut fixer and more. Auto updates and scheduled maintenance. You can leave it running in background, but not necessary and uses memory as defragger works continuously then and will slow system a bit. Defrags automatically when does scheduled run, so unnecessary to keep it open. Just exit it from the system tray to shut it down.

4. AMUST-Defender 2.0 – For safe web and email browsing. Seamlesly and automatically runs whenever opening IE or email application. Switches user from Admin status to User status, to protect PC while on the net. Is free.

Only issue with AMUST is it blocks download installs which require Admin privileges to execute. Easily fixed though by either using option “Save” (not “Run”) and opening the executable file manually for installation. Alternatively, can by-pass AMUST at will, by opening IE without AMUST, before download, which means not protected for that download.

NtfsDisableLastAccess

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

When I dive into HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem, I don’t see the NtfsDisableLastAccess key. I added it anyway with a value of ‘1’ (and re-booted) but I still get the ‘Last Accessed’ date updated to today’s date when I see the properties of files. As far as I’m concerned this date is useless and I would like to get rid of it!

Safer ordering of items

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

You can sort these steps in various ways, e.g. based on how slow is the PC (disabled cache being one of the slowest) or when it is slow (several causes are only in effect when connected to the Internet).

There’s also “slow and stable” vs. “slow and flaky”, which have chunks of stuff that don’t overlap.

But IMO it’s best to exclude the most dangerous items first, starting with a failing hard drive, which you should expect if the mouse pointer “sticks” and the HD activity LED is solidly on.

RAM crashes at full speed (which is why item 3 is false) but hard drives go into retry loops, as you note in 4. Don’t wait for “increasing” bad sectors; just ONE is grounds enough to replace the hard drive!

Once you know the hardware’s OK (HD, fans, etc.) then check the file system, then exclude malware. I would do all of those steps before attempting to run Windows at all, using boot CDRs for MemTest (RAM check), BING (partition backup) and Bart (HD disgs, data recovery and malware management platform).

Then I’d disconnect peripherals and add these back on a test-to-break basis, then do the same for startup items and non-MS services. When that’s done, only then would I go online, etc.

More things to check

In reply to Safer ordering of items

Once you’ve done all of that, it may be worth looking for integrations that increase the overhead of displaying folders.

Start by clearing the desktop, so that every change to registry Classes doesn’t have to force a redraw of hundreds of desktop icons. Do the same thing for “My Documents”, as reportedly “too many items” can hurt there, and while you’re up, hunt down and kill search and media indexers, thumbnailers, etc.

Once that’s done, you can move on to shell integrations that don’t show up in MSConfig, HiJackThis etc. but which can hurt shell performance.

Start by searching the registry for references to come-and-go drive letters, i.e. optical disks, USB drives, slow mapped network drives, etc. (best is to avoid mapping network shares to drive letters).

For example, you may find an icon for a file type is defined via a reference to K:\SomePlace, as a sticky side-effect of running some app from USB stick K: that populates the registry when run.

Save (as .REG) whatever you clean up – there’s few things slower than a PC unavalable for days while unbootability is fixed!

Having done that, move on to Nirsoft’s Shell Extension Viewer, which allows you to reversibly disable shell integrations (the things that populate right-click menus below the “cut line” or as flyouts, etc.).

I usually do this by sorting on vendor, then disabling the non-Microsoft stuff that isn’t obviously things that I want. This is how I caught WinZip breaking the status line display of .ZIP file size (replacing it with a count of files within, which I find less useful).

How to open a laptop to clean out dust?

In reply to DOWNLOAD: 10 things you should know about troubleshooting a slow PC

Any idea where I can get instructions to open a Dell D830 laptop to clean out dust? That’s a lot tougher than opening a desktop!

And do we always blow using compressed air? May I use a vacuum cleaner with a small nozzle attachment?

[Author]

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