Hi

A friend of mine is experiencing some problems with his PC. His windows takes an extremely long time to load (it sits on the welcome screen for about 10 minutes), once it does finally load there is practically nothing you can do due to the slowness. The boot up sequence takes a normal amount of time, which is why I think this may be a virus. The strange thing is that if I open task manager there are no processes running with high usage, it sits around 0-1% CPU usage and there is plenty of free memory.

I would appreciate it if anyone can advise me on what may be the cause of this.Is this a virus, or is it hardware? I have been unable to scan the computer for spyware/anti-virus as it is just to slow (even in safe mode).

Obviously, I am looking for a solution other than a reformat if possible.

Thanks for any help.

Bryan.

Ok, so no format (even though it is the best option).

If I had a too slow computer... ok first thing is that I would format it... but in this case... choose a day that you don't need it.
Start the computer
Start the scan (both virus and spyware, only NOT TOGETHER!!!).
Go do other things.
Check from time to time if the scan is still operational.

Gender doesn't matter in the Computing world. Commom sence does.
Don't forget that.

are you on dial-up or high speed? When was the last time the PC was defragged?

First I would d/l crap cleaner and ATF-cleaner and empty out ALL the excess junk on the PC. You'll be amazed at what you'll find.
Then you could boot into safe mode and let it defrag...it will probably take a long time depending on the HD size and the last time it was done.
Then reboot and try some free scans with:
Spybot S&D
Adaware SE
Spyware Blaster
Also do an updated AV scan.

Now see if that picks things up for you

Hopefully my advice will help you...Please post back with your results....thanks

Thanks for the replies.

When the guy phoned me the first thought I had was that I would scan for viruses/spyware. The problem is that the computer is running so slowly that it would literally take me all day just to get a scan started! Going in safe mode does not help, it is still just as slow.

We have convinced him to allow us to format it, so I will do that tomorrow and post my results here, but unless there is something wrong with the hardware the format should fix it.

Hello controL,

How many things are being loaded on startup? If you have too many programs trying to start, the result will be a very slow machine, especially if spyware, malware, worms, or viruses are already present.

I would suggest disabling all programs and services that are not essential. Afterwards, try your scans.

Regards

Dark Shadow

Hi

We installed a fresh copy of Windows and the problem has been resolved.

I would have liked to know what virus/spyware/etc. was causing that though. Whatever it was completely took over the performance of the system, task manager reported low usage and it still had the same effect in safe mode.

Funny thing is that the guy said that he had not used the internet in a long time. He must have installed some dodgey software or something!

Thanks for the help :)
Cheers