Hi everyone. This is my first time posting. I'm not very computer literate so please keep that in mind. I stay at my daughter's a few days a week and am hoping some kind soul will help us through a problem we're having on this computer. It seems to have suddenly slowed up for some reason. The computer is used mainly for storing family photos for my daughter, my son-in-laws music and video collection (all legal, from iTunes) and my own keeping in touch with family and friends in Scotland, through yahoo and MSN. It hasn't been overloaded with photos or music as there is still over 69% of the memory free. For the last 2 or 3 weeks, it's taken awhile to start up, gets kind of choppy or starts and stops when viewing his videos,or, for another example of the problems, I'll click on an arrow to scroll down a page and there's a delay before it starts to move. Sometimes moving the mouse doesn't move the curser at the same exact time. And upon shutdown, a screen comes up saying any number of programs such as shellconhiddenwindow, sgtray.exe, and one other I can't think of at the moment, is not responding and should be shut down. I don't know if it helps to know one more bit of info but it's not a dial up connection, I believe she's got fiber optic for that. Could someone please offer any advice? Thank you for your time. Linda

You can check this link to a post that had a similar situation as yours: http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/... Also you can download a 15 day trial version of counterspy and run a scan to check for any malware that may have found it's way on the system. You can download the trial version from this link: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/Hom... Aroostook County Maine Computer Repair Service http://www.thepc-emt.com

You can start with some basic scans 1: try a free online scan at: http://www.spywareinfo.com/xscan.php 2: run http://www.ccleaner.com/download/ and remove all it finds 3: run the free http://www.spybot.info/en/download/... and immunize and delete all the problems it finds http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spy... That should get you back on track What is your AV and firewall? Hopefully my advice will help you...Please post back with your results....thanks

There you go, just to show how bad I am at this, I've just posted a reply to PC-EMT and XpUser4Real and lost it when the site said I wasn't logged in yet. What I said was, thank you so much for your help. I spent awhile last night going to the sites you've sent me to and need to download just a couple more. I got sidetracked reading on the sites. I'll get back to this work tonight as I only have a couple of hours to do these things on this computer each night. Takes me that long since I'm paranoid I'll make things worse. I just wanted to make sure these two nice people know I've got their suggestions and am grateful for their time and trouble. I will get back on and let you know how I've gotten on with things. Oh and I've asked my daughter what AV and Firewall she has and she said McAfee.........to both questions. Thanks again. It really was generous of you. Linda

Hello again, PC-EMT, XPUser4Real, and any others who have taken the time to read this. Sorry I took a few days to come back but I go home on Thursdays and head back here on Sunday nights. I've finally downloaded all the programs you've suggested and run them. First, I already had Adaware, Spybot and CCleaner on this machine and run & update them once a week before I head home. I ran the CounterSpy program and it showed a couple of problems and also 2 Trojans, which I "fixed" by checking the appropriate button. A followup scan when I returned said there were no problems according to that site. OK, next, I went to the spywareinfo.com/xscan site and there wasn't an actual online scan. I had to download a free trial version. Here's where I got a little bit nervous. I clicked on all boxes for "Inoculate" and to scan for malware. When it came to "Cleaning", I clicked most of the boxes but a few, such as "Clear Internet Explorer (all)", "Reset Windows Policies", "Protect IE Start Page & Settings", etc. made me a bit nervous. If this function of the site was to "clean" these checked items, I was afraid it would wipe them out of the computer somehow. Should I go back and check all that I left out? I suppose I should let you know the current status of where things stand after doing all of this. The computer still seems so slow. I'll list a couple of things I still notice. It takes quite a bit longer to sign on. Longer still, about 7 or 8 tries, to log onto my yahoo messenger from here. It keeps saying there's a problem with the log on and I keep clicking "keep trying" till I get it. If I'm typing to a friend on there, suddenly, the letters stop appearing and then spash on the little window all at once. When my daughter tries to get into her Kokak program to see the latest pictures we've taken of her baby, that also now takes ages to come up and sometimes freezes. And now, something new I've noticed, but only on this site...some words are now highlighted and link to advertising sites. Words such as trouble, lost, track and firewall. I'm sorry for such a long posting. It's just that I tried to let you know what I've done and what the results were. One final update. Some of the things that flash on the screen during shutdown, saying they're closing are: _ptawia, sgtray.exe, GDWH and that Shelllcomhiddenwindow. I believe the ptawia is from the Kodak program. And the shelllcomhiddenwindow is from the Music Match one. My son in law hooks up a portable device to copy his music to it. OK, so are we hopelessly in trouble? Should we call in outside help? Whether or not you say to go for outside help, I would like to thank PC-EMT and XPUser4Real for taking the time to try and help. Thanks, guys. Linda