Serious Speed issues, Incredibly slow for no reason. Whats going on???

[toddy89]

So basically, a friend of mines laptop is running all of a sudden incredibly slowly for no apparent reason, in general affecting things (so most things) that use that accsess the harddrive. The Laptop,

-IBM THINKPAD
-intel celeron M
-XP home

has had viruses but regular scans have been run to remove them. Could it be a virus, and spyware doesnt show anything wrong.

Any ideas of how to get it back to normal??? This isnt just a plea for ways to speed up a lagging laptop but how to fix it and stop what is slowing it down.

Thanks everyone in advance!

Toddy

 

[iss]

if he had viruses and spyware emoved then some of the system files may have been damaged or deleted. If you have a XP home Cd you can run System file checker. put the Cd in the drive and open a command prompt and type sfc /scannow then press enter. this will run system file checker and replace any damaged or missing system files. also has he defragmented the hard drive?

 

[toddy89]

yes he has, quite a lot actually, is it that its "too-unfragmented"??? or that its not and its fine that he has....

although it will loose alot of stuff, i recon a simple system restore would be a good idea, just to get it sorted. If that works ill let you know. He does have the disk, but not right now and it was for his old laptop, (also XP home) as he got nothing with this one, (refurbished)....

!!thanks!!

 

[iss]

if he left system restore enabled when cleaning out the viruses then he probably still has some. the first thing you must do to rid yourself of viruses or trojans is disable system restore which eleminates all restore points. after the cleaning renable system restore. many virus and trojans target the system restore files for infection since they are protected windows files and virus scanners cant delete them.