VERY!! slow computer

[Hodsocks]

I am having problems with a VERY slow computer, in normal mode it takes forever to boot into windows, in safe mode it boots more or less as usual. Operating system is Windows XP.
As its OK in safe mode I naturally assume its contamination from some software but so far I have run, in normal and in safe mode, Spybot, Ad-aware, Ewido, AVG, Norton antivirus and an online scan fron Panda software and have found a few items but less than a couple of dozen in total. I have ran Hijackthis and nothing stands out as being a problem so at the moment I am a little stumped. I have also tried system restore back to a couple of months ago.
Any suggestions as to what to try next?

 

[Rik]

Get rid of norton, it will probably speed up a fair bit by just doing that.

 

[GeekieNick101]

correct norton really slow systems down by a LOT

 

[Hodsocks]

I know Norton slows things down a bit but not as much as this, like 4.5 minutes from clicking on something to it opening, as I said in safe mode it runs fine.
Since my last post I have ran another virus scan and also 2 more anti -spyware scans and still slow.

 

[Daveskater]

turning off some of the things at startup would help, you might have 2 or more programs clashing and slowing your pc down and making your cpu usage 100% all the time. i had the same problem. if you check out each of your running services (ctrl alt del) and double check them on processlibrary.com, try stopping a few and see if it helps, but only if processlibrary says that it's not an essensial process. we don't want to go breaking anything! it's the way i found out, one will close and cpu will drop to something like 10%. it's like being free again!

just in case you have either of these: the programs that i had trouble with were CA ez antivirus and Trend micro anti spyware. if you have both of them then try stopping the "VetMsg.exe" process, that's what did it for me. that will close ez antivirus.

 

[Rik]

I know Norton slows things down a bit but not as much as this, like 4.5 minutes

I fixed a pc last week by removing norton first off, its boot time went from 25 minutes to 2 minutes just by removing that crap.

 

[taylub]

download hijack thishttp://www.download.com/HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10379544.html do a system scan and save a log file

then follows these instructions on how to post your results
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic50981.html
MAKE SHUR you post it in the security and the web fourm
and somone ( most likely howard) will take a look and he should be able to help

 

[wolfram]

I fixed a pc last week by removing norton first off, its boot time went from 25 minutes to 2 minutes just by removing that crap.

25 minutes to boot? WOW

 

[Tedster]

download and run crap cleaner. FREE.
also optimize your hard disk
run your anti-trojan and anti-virus as well.

 

[wolfram]

I agree with Tedster. Defragment your hdd. It can really help

 

[korrupt]

Post a Hijackthis log anyways just to be sure.

Regards,

Korrupt

 

[KLopez316]

Try getting rid of any unnecessary software or changing your display settings. If nothing else works you can run msconfig and go to services to stop any that take up a lot of memory, like indexing.

 

[Hodsocks]

Ok I finally got to the bottom of the problem, norton wasn't working and throwing up error messages so I decided to delete it, it took 3 hours in all but when I rebooted the machine it was back up to speed. I installed AVG and all seems to be OK.