For the past few weeks my PC has been running really slowly. IT sounds like the hard drive is permanently flicking through and my internet is running dog slow keeps jamming up and crashing out.I did stupidly open an e-mail attachment without thinking as I was working through about 140 e-mails. My anti virus and spyware has picked up nothing and says everything is fine.I run AVG and Spybot.Any help or advice gratfully received

 

Added, machine is running nothing but internet explorer and I have 4 windows open and it takes about 15 seconds to swap between windows.

 

I would not personally trust AVG to let me know it is running, let alone search for virus.
I simply do not trust it at all, i have removed viruses from to many systems running AVG to think otherwise

 

If it sounds like your HDD is constantly seeking with no visible reason/program making it do so - then I would say the actual drive itself is on its way out mate!!

 

delete the root of C

 

when you boot the system into safe mode with command prompt only does the hard disk still seek continiously

 

HOw do I boot into safe mode?Don't mean to be a thickie

 

restart and hit f8 fefore the XP logo appears

p.s ingore my earlier comment in one of those moods

 

Andy....you helpful cunt!!!

 

..............what its friday

 

Right did that and the HDD was silent. Rebooted it again into normal and it's still nice and quiet.

 

it sound slike a service was running that was hammering your hard disk, probably using a lot of page file...
What's your performance like since you have rebooted and how much memory does your computer have ?

 

try installing firefox and see if browsing is any faster through that

i think AVG is total shit. wouldnt touch it with an 80ft barge pole

 

AVG isn't worth a wank. Get it uninstalled and load Avast.

Sounds like you've got some process or other loading on Windows startup thats hammering the shit out of your machine. More than likely a trojan of some sort.

Run 'MSConfig' from your run command (just type it in and hit OK). Look at the services and startup tabs. Make a note of any that arent Microsoft or clearly identifiable (such as printer/camera utils and the like) and google them. You may find a virus/trojan amongst them, in which case google should also point you at a way to get rid of it.

 

if the drive is constatly clicking, it could be old and on its way out, or it could be "thrashing"
the drive might be fragmented.

its very hard to explain, but after you delete stuff on the hdd, the computer sees it as free space and plonks new data there (excuse the technical term ) after a few months you can imagine the data is all over the place, the computer knows where it is though, but as its in so many differnt places it just takes longer to get (imagine your tools neatly laid out on a bench at the start of the day, and then by the end they're usually round the car, inside it, on the scuttle etc etc)

you could try a drive fragment.

go to my computer
rightclick on C:\
properties
defragment now
analyse.

this will give you an idea, i.e if it looks like a barcode of red and white you need to defragment. then you can choose whether to defrag it or not. do this at night before you go to bed though as it can take up to a few hours to complete, and the comp doesn't really like anyother activity going on whilst the defrag is taking place.

sorry if i sound patronising, its not meant that way but some people know more about computers than others. and my little instructions are based on xp, cos its what i've got.

 

Agreed that Avast is much better than AVG however running MSConfig is not always going to show the problem as you can hide services and processes you have to run something such as hijackthis to view all running services and processes in windows

 

Certainly a good tip. I tend to use msc first but both HijackThis and Process Explorer are invaluable tools for this type of thing.

If you do download and run 'Hijackthis' you can post up the results here and we'll all have a nosey through the log and tell you what shouldnt be there.

 

If you have a copy of windows it may just be easier to backup any important documents/files and reinstall windows, that way you know 100% that you dont have any virus/spyware and the machine should run perfectly, if the hard drive still spins up after a clean install of windows you know its the hard drive on its way out.

Installing windows might sound too long winded for some, but ive done it so many times its like eating a hot dinner to me

 

not always the case Windows XP will run on a system with 64 mb of memory but will hammer the hard disk as it has to do vast amount of paging data to the hard disk.

Not to mention once you have replaced those valuable important documents/files you may end up in exactly the same situation, what if one of these documents has a scripted virus.. word and excel viruses are widespread.

Things happen for a reason you simply have to find out why.

 

Id be willing to bet the guys pc has more than 64MB of memory though and also i bet its not a virus causing this.

 

Yeah get avast and use firefox aswell