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2006-08-16 00:49:48
Lt.Garbo
Commander God
+41|6958|Denver, CO
Any thoughts?

A friend of mine gave me her computer to look at/fix.  Apparently, she downloaded a virus or spyware that prevented her anti-virus from scanning and updating.  It also prevented her connection to the internet.  She had a valid IP, just couldn't do anything.

I brought it back and simply did a low level hard drive format / Windows Reinstall.

After a CLEAN INSTALL and not being connected online at all (no chance for virus), her computer is still acting weird.  EVERY program (I.E., Calc, Solitare, etc.) takes FOREVER to load.  I'll double click the icon (or single click the link in the start menu) and literally about 3-5 minutes later, the program loads.

If I double on IE and then hit CTRL+ALT+DEL, the program opens with the Task Manager right away.  Without it, it take 3-5 minutes.  Any thoughts????

I am in the process of testing the memory right now.

Last edited by Lt.Garbo (2006-08-16 00:54:32)

2006-08-16 01:43:40
MECtallica
Member
+73|6806|jalalabad
you should of just wiped the partition , fixes pretty much all software issues, if you wiped the part, its probably 90% hardware related. some one can correct me if im wrong, seems I always am on the internet.
2006-08-16 02:06:44
Lt.Garbo
Commander God
+41|6958|Denver, CO
I did wipe the entire drive.  I did a low level format.  Wiped it completely clean.
2006-08-16 11:28:45
Twist
Too old to be doing this sh*t
+103|6825|Little blue planet, milky way
First off... NEVER EVER do a low level format... This tends (read: it WILL DEFINATELY) to reset the drives "memory" of which blocks on the disk are bad... Worst case scenario, you get a piece of your swap file in a bad area and you loose a couple of hours work when the PC crashes.

Secondly, if things start slowly there may be a vareity of issues. First thing to do is to open the task manager as you did. Start a program (solitaire will do if you have SERIOUS problems), see if it takes up 100% of the CPU power (or if at least the CPU idle starts to drop significantly) while loading. If it does, you have a problem with the internal data transfer in the PC... Any peice of hardware, the OS or a virus/malware may be causing this. Troubleshooting will be TOUGH.
If things load up nicely while you have the task manager open, then check the machines virtual memory settings. You may have a bottleneck situtaion caused by either a bad drive, or a bad swapfile. Try disabling the paging/swap and restart.
If this STILL didn't solve the problem, then you may have a bad FAT/NTFS table on the drive. Normally a disk verification and/or unconditional format will help. However, in order to test/solve this you WILL need to obtain a second drive and install windows on it.
If this STILL didn't help, then you need to post more complete information about what you've tried and what happened. 'Coz offhand, I can only say that it will be tricky.
2006-08-16 13:43:24
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,060|7074|PNW

Through my experience, my first guess would be that the hard drive itself that is failing. I keep a spare drive around with Windows on it just to test that possibility on computers I am working with, just to avoid the initial troubleshooting steps that Twist mentioned. If the computer still has issues, then the hard drive is likely not (or at least just a part) of the problem. You can then get to fixing what the real problem is, and then stick the old hard drive back in to see if it's still acting strange, and that the hard drive was half of the problem after all. If so, you can either fix it or, if it's just a pittance of total space, chuck it in a box and put another one in.

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2006-08-16 13:45:20)

2006-08-16 20:21:44
Lt.Garbo
Commander God
+41|6958|Denver, CO
The memory passed.  I think I am leaning toward your suggestion unnamednewboe13.  Ill try a new h.d.

 

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