Hello everyone

My PC is running slow.  Here’s what I can tell you.  Any application when opened 
or executing a command or loading web pages with heavy graphics temporarily pegs 
the cpu at 100% for 15 to 20 seconds causing freeze-ups and audio stuttering.  Any 
multi tasking such as printing two docs simultaneously on separate printers is now 
impossible where there was no problem before.  When surfing the net I constantly 
have to reboot after a short while as the web pages stop loading (often the message 
“wnd status” appears in the address bar).  Its as if I’m out of system resources. 
 I have 512 mb/ram which doesn’t seem to be effected by CPU usage as it never exceeds 
197/512 even when at 100% cpu usage.

Here’s what I’ve done:

1) Norton anti-virus is always on.

2) Ran Spybot which listed and cleaned a lot of junk that apparently got past Norton 
(what’s up with that?).

3) Ran Registry Mechanic including deep scan.

4) Ran Windowscare V2. To clean junk files, shut down unnecessary programs at start-up, 
etc.

5) Defragged the harddrive with diskeeper.

PC performance did not improve at all.  Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,
Paul Bolden

Gateway
P4 – 1.9 Ghz
512/ram
Radeon 9250
xp-pro serv pak2
Directx  9c
Open GL 5.1

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Follow this This Procedure to remove any malware (post the logs on the forum if you would like), then check HERE, MrC

Malware Removal Specialist

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Two things I would check first:
1)  Check the Event Viewer for error messages, especailly pertaining to hardware, 
the IDE channels or the HDD's

2) in the device manager, check the IDE channels to see if they are running in PIO 
or DMA mode.  If PIO, it will slow your machine to a crawl.  Set it to DMA, or delete 
the channels and reboot, let Windows reload the driver and see what happens.  Second 
issue that can slow a machine down are hardware/HDD/drive problems, so one should 
always check the Event Viewer for error messages when starting a troubleshooting 
procedure.

If your machine is being set to PIO mode, then you have some issues, usually dealing 
with hardware throwing errors which causes the default to revert to PIO, slowing 
the machane down.

If it shows running DMA  for both IDE channels in the device manager, then you start 
looking for other causes..









On Tuesday, October 2, 2007 at 3:06 pm, paul bolden wrote:

>Hello everyone

>

>My PC is running slow.  Here’s what I can tell you.  Any application when opened 

>or executing a command or loading web pages with heavy graphics temporarily pegs 

>the cpu at 100% for 15 to 20 seconds causing freeze-ups and audio stuttering.  Any 

>multi tasking such as printing two docs simultaneously on separate printers is now 

>impossible where there was no problem before.  When surfing the net I constantly 

>have to reboot after a short while as the web pages stop loading (often the message 

>“wnd status” appears in the address bar).  Its as if I’m out of system resources. 

> I have 512 mb/ram which doesn’t seem to be effected by CPU usage as it never exceeds 

>197/512 even when at 100% cpu usage.

>

>Here’s what I’ve done:

>

>1) Norton anti-virus is always on.

>

>2) Ran Spybot which listed and cleaned a lot of junk that apparently got past Norton 

>(what’s up with that?).

>

>3) Ran Registry Mechanic including deep scan.

>

>4) Ran Windowscare V2. To clean junk files, shut down unnecessary programs at start-up, 

>etc.

>

>5) Defragged the harddrive with diskeeper.

>

>PC performance did not improve at all.  Anyone have any ideas?

>

>Thanks,

>Paul Bolden

>

>Gateway

>P4 – 1.9 Ghz

>512/ram

>Radeon 9250

>xp-pro serv pak2

>Directx  9c

>Open GL 5.1 

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Thanks MrCharlie and CK,

CK. That did the trick.  The secondary IDE channel was stuck in pio mode.  I deleted 
the driver, rebooted and the system seems to be running fine.  Thanks again guys!!!

Paul Bolden

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Absolute Beauty - this fix on the IDE channels really works and then adding some RAm which arrived today my Dell laptop is going like a rocket. many thanks.


On Tuesday, October 2, 2007 at 4:49 pm, C K wrote:
>Two things I would check first:
>1) Check the Event Viewer for error messages, especailly pertaining to hardware,
>the IDE channels or the HDD's
>
>2) in the device manager, check the IDE channels to see if they are running in PIO
>or DMA mode. If PIO, it will slow your machine to a crawl. Set it to DMA, or delete
>the channels and reboot, let Windows reload the driver and see what happens. Second
>issue that can slow a machine down are hardware/HDD/drive problems, so one should
>always check the Event Viewer for error messages when starting a troubleshooting
>procedure.
>
>If your machine is being set to PIO mode, then you have some issues, usually dealing
>with hardware throwing errors which causes the default to revert to PIO, slowing
>the machane down.
>
>If it shows running DMA for both IDE channels in the device manager, then you start
>looking for other causes..
>
>
>
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Well Done there C K, MrC

Malware Removal Specialist

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

In case you have additional/similar issues in the future, this link may help:

http://winhlp.com/node/10

Glad to hear it helped.  Good Luck!  :-)







On Tuesday, October 2, 2007 at 10:47 pm, paul bolden wrote:

>Thanks MrCharlie and CK,

>

>CK. That did the trick.  The secondary IDE channel was stuck in pio mode.  I deleted 

>the driver, rebooted and the system seems to be running fine.  Thanks again guys!!!

>

>Paul Bolden 

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

The OP listed enough of the symptoms that I was suspicious of the DMA/PIO mode issue. 
 An age old problem since DMA has been in existance it seems..

In case you ever need it, a good article here:

http://winhlp.com/node/10

A little more info than MS' KB articles, which it also references.  Just couldn't 
find it in my links to post earlier..  Regards..  :-)







On Wednesday, October 3, 2007 at 10:15 am, MrCharlie wrote:

>

>Well Done there C K,   MrC 

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

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