Dell desktop Running Way slow

[OKnewguy]

I hope to pick everyones brains about a frustrating computer problem.
About a week ago my desktop started acting like it had a virus or something. If I bring up task manager it hovers around 96 to 100% cpu usage.
I had not reformated in a couple of years, but it had been acting really well up to this point.
I ran spybot, avg, adaware, defraged, disc clean up and maybe some other things that I can not think of off the top of my head.
So after this trouble shooting I then thougt I might still have some kind of bug, so I moved everything to my spare hard drive, and then reformated.
I then got it all back up to date, put avg back on (but not zone alarm yet), and it still ran like a snail. I then questioned my ram, I have 2 512's, and swapped them with some that my brother has (also a gig) and there was no change. I am usually the tech guy that all of my friends and family go to for help, but this is really kicking my backside. Am I having a processor problem? How would I check that? Any other ideas.
Thanks for any and all help.
Dave

Computer specs
Dell Demension 2350 (with xp)
1.7 gig processor
1 gig of ram.

 

[JayC]

You said you moved everything from your HDD to another one and then you got it back up and running. Could it be possible that copying stuff from your backups you moved the problem right back onto the new format? Did you try doing the scans and stuff from Safe Mode? I would also recommending the use of HijackThis. It will find the issue, but the catch is it looks at a lot of files and does not distinguish between bad and good files. There are forums that will look at the report HijackThis generates and will tell what's good or not. You can use Google to find a forum that may help. I wish I knew of one, but I never had to use a forum.

Trend Micro HijackThis - Free software downloads and reviews - CNET Download.com

 

[czechsonofagun]

I would start with The home of Spybot-S&D!.

My $0.02

 

[OKnewguy]

Thanks for the quick replies, I currently to not have the 2nd drive even hooked up. I wanted to make sure that something from that drive might mess things up, just like you were thinking. I did run spy bot search and destroy. I will check out high jack.
Thanks, Dave

 

[Dmace]

When you open task manager and see it running high (90%+), click on the processes tab and then click on the size Mem Usage title twice so that it is sorted from highest to lowest in usage. See what process is using the most memory and then do a Google search to find out what it is. Some will stick out like explorer.exe or taskmgr.exe which obviously cannot be ended. I bet you have some processes from an Antivirus or other program sucking down your available memory. One big one is RTVScan.exe that runs from Symantec Anti-virus and is a memory hog.

Secondly, go to the Performance tab of the task manager and look under the "Physical Memory (K)" table to see the total available RAM. My laptop has 512MB of RAM so it reads "523496". Now look at the Peak Commit Charge and see if that number is higher than your total physical memory. Mine reads 319868 so the computer has plenty of RAM for the programs I run. If the peak is higher than your total then you need more RAM. When your computer runs out of RAM it uses hard drive space, the problem is that accessing the hard drive is about 10,000 times slower than accessing the RAM. No exaggeration, real numbers. RAM is cheap and easy to install, it's the best performance per dollar upgrade available if neccessary.

Also, install and run this program (Glary Utilities | Glarysoft) it is one of the best resource tools out.

 

[Willl]

I had not reformated in a couple of years

Maybe it's time.
Afraid to say, but at some point ya got to say that your time is worth more than this and just format the B%*$@.

Oops, did I say that last part out loud ?

 

[OKnewguy]

I am still checking out hijack. I just played around with glary, seems pretty cool. This seems to always be the case, but you always have to have multiple scans from different programs, adaware, spybot, and now glary. They all find different problems (btw, none of them have found any virusus or even spyware, just tracking cookies). I DID reformat, which has always, made any computer I use run like a bat out of ****. So far, it seems like I-explore, is the bigest hog, followed by avg. I have checked all of the process, and all of them are supposedly legit, and should not be deleted, but why do 5 svchost.exe run. They usually are not big hogs, but they do add up. Btw, the physical memory and commit charge seem to jive, the commit (which if I understand right is how much memory the task should take) is less then 1/3 of the physical. What are we missing?
Thanks guys, Dave

 

[Willl]

Ya I noticed I got a bunch of 'svchost.exe' running also.

"I-explore"....yuck.

 

[OKnewguy]

Willl, I also have firefox, and it will peg it out just IE.
Dave

 

[EastTexFrank]

This happened to me a few months back. I have 1GB of RAM and it got to where it was waaaayyyy slow. One culprit was Norton Anti-Virus but the main reason, after a lot of searching, was that my APC battery back-up had failed. It appeared to be working, the green light was on, etc., but it wasn't protecting anything. The software on the computer was trying to communicate with the back-ups and was eating up more and more RAM in the effort. It didn't give me any error messages or any indication that something was wrong. Once I disconnected the faulty UPS the CPU usage dropped to less than 20%. Strange.....

Give it a try and see if it works for you.