Troubleshooting a Hard-Working HP

April 6, 2004 9:49 AM

My computer (HP Pavilion PIII running XP) has been straining lately. It's slow to load programs, occasionally hangs for a second on simple tasks and throws out some odd flashing on bootup that wasn't there before.

If I was going to address this, how would I go about it step-by-step? Preferably without simply reformatting and reinstalling because I don't want to sort out my backups unless I absolutely have to.
posted by Mayor Curley to computers & internet (6 comments total)

I had a similar problem, and it turned out to be a spyware program that had taken over and was using a huge amount of CPU time.

I first scanned with anti-virus and with Spybot, but nothing came up. So I got the Task Manager going (Ctrl-Alt-Del, and choose Task Manager), then chose the Processes tab, and saw the name of the program that was using the most CPU time.

It gave the name of the program, which I then searched for on Google. (I found out it was a piece of spyware that had gotten installed when I put in a CD from Verizon for a new phone.) Anyway, I searched for the program (it was a hidden file), and deleted it there and edited it out of the registry, and suddenly my machine came back to life!
posted by jasper411 at 10:27 AM on April 6, 2004

You definitely want to first virus scan/anti spyware the computer. Check the running processes to see if there's something eating all the cpu. Check the hardware dialogues in the control panel to make sure all the hardware is functional (all the ram is functioning, no irq stuff, ect).
posted by apathy0o0 at 10:27 AM on April 6, 2004

throws out some odd flashing on bootup that wasn't there before.

Well that's a little disturbing. Like the DOS-looking stuff has new text showing up? You might try hitting DEL or F8 or whatever it is to walk through the step-by-step boot process to see what's being called. After checking the Processes tab to see who's doing what.
posted by yerfatma at 11:23 AM on April 6, 2004

Do you have an old HP scanner? Also, check that the CPU fan is running at peak speed. The CPU over heating can cause momentary pauses like that. These things have happened to me and caused similar issues.
posted by pissfactory at 12:19 PM on April 6, 2004

have a firewall installed? you might have some slave utility running, using you as an ftp server. often looks like "slave.exe" in the process tree, usually running serve-U ftp.

antivirus won't catch it, although a spyware program might. i've been using ad-aware (www.lavasoft.de) for a long time now, free for personal use, seems to be very helpful.

if you do have a slave server running, it's kind of hard to get rid of. it runs without giving you the permissions to remove it. you have to find it, shut it down, disconnect from any broadband/dial up, delete it, delete the self-reinstalling prog set to run at startup.... i only had to do this once, on a WinNT system, so i don't remember all the details. but it was kind of a pain, had similar symptoms to what you describe, and once removed and properly firewalled no problems. anyway you can probably find detailed removal instructions online once you know what it is.

check here for more info / tools you can use (disclaimer: no experience with this site, but looks legit)

if no firewall, try tiny firewall or zonealarm. free and relatively user-friendly. ISS blackice is ok, but given the recent vulnerability to the witty worm that i and everyone on my campus running blackice had to deal with, i'm not in the mood to recommend it right now. (upgrade to fix vulnerability. oh, you bought the program in november 2003? sorry, not entitled to upgrades any more. gee, thanks, blackice!)

good luck.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:37 PM on April 6, 2004

oh, and windows firewall i'm just not OK with given the absolute inability to configure it in any way, at least not until post-XP Service Pack 2 anyway...
posted by caution live frogs at 12:38 PM on April 6, 2004