horrible slow down on start up

[SornyPanafonic]

hi everyone, a friend of mine has a relatively new computer (less than a year old) - HP, Amd 2800+, 512 ram, 160gb hd, windows xp home. shes saying that she experiences horrible slow down on startup, the mouse disappears and it takes a while for it to come to. when it does, it barely works and actually completely freezes on remedial tasks, like opening aol and so on. i have yet to see her comp, but i figured that someone here might have experienced something similar to this and can give me a heads up on what to look for or what to do. much thanks for any advice.

 

[Magniitude]

I suppose the first decision is to run a spyware/adware and virus scan and see if that helps.

 

[zephead]

i'll tell you this now: bring a CD with all the software you're going to need over there. you'll probably have a difficult time getting a download on the machine itself because of the bogged down OS. i say you arm yourself with the following apps, available for free downloads from the web:
-avg free edition installer
-ad aware SE personal installer
-ccleaner
-ewdio security suite
-nailfix (be prepared to follow this post, if nessesary )
-hijackthis
-sygate personal firewall

these are the main things i have on my util cd for cleaning up windows machines. once you get there, install all of these progs escept sygate. update each one using their built in updater. then reboot in safe mode. log in as administrator, not her normal user account. at this point, you can run full ccleaner, avg free, and ad aware scans (in that order). additional cleanups/scans may be nessesary, and you're probably going to have to use hijackthis. if aurora is present, wait until after you remove the bulk of this crap before following rbs's instructions.

good luck

 

[SornyPanafonic]

magniitude she already ran her norton, but it came up empty, as always.

zephead, thanks for the gameplan, i am going try to do what you said tomorrow if i get a chance, ill respond as soon as i can. i think for the most part her computer wont even connect to the internet, but we will see. thanks again for your advice.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Also print out , or download the attachment with the instructions from:

Follow these instructions EXACTLY and put HijackThis in e.g C:\Program Files\HJT and NOT in Temp or on the Desktop!.
How to remove Begin2Search/Coolwebsearch and Other Nasties

Then see How to post your Hijackthis log-files as an attachment.