My MS Office has been running extremely slow lately, the only app that runs normal is Outlook. All the rest ( I only use Word, Powerpoint, Publisher, and Excel take a long time to load files and the app itself.
Anybody have any ideas? Hopefully it's something common and easy to resolve?

The cause is usually elsewhere on your system. Can we assume you have run scans by Avira or Avast, SuperAntiSpyware, MalwareBytes, and HiJackThis?

I have had Avast on here since day 1, only recently have I run quick scans using S.A.S and MalwareBytes, haven't run HiJack This yet. I guess I'll have to get 'er done and see what it comes up with.

Log files were removed and I put them all together on the last post...

If the 8 steps come up clean (http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic58138.html)
Then, you might want to consider possible drive issues:
If you have a heavily fragmented drive, or if you have inadequate free-space, you may experience slowdowns too.

Thanks for your input B00kWyrm, I have already ruled out the drive being fragmented, I'm always on top of that. Free space might be a little different; the HD is 100GB in which I have approx. 25% left ( I can get the exact value tomorrow, but it's a close round-about figure) I think that kind of space should be adequate?...

Again... as long as you have no malware operating...

Something else to check might be what is using system resources.
Using WIndows Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del) you can monitor (in real time) what processes are using your system. You can sort the list by cpu usage.

Some have reported other programs (that may be interacting with Office) are in fact the real slowdown culprits... (like HP digital imaging monitor).

It occurs to me that Symantec products and ZoneAlarm are known to be resource intensive, and may be the real cause, even though it seems like it is Office that is dogging the system.

As B00kWyrm points out, i'd also advise keeping an eye on CPU utilization (as well as other resources). My personal favorite tool is Process Explorer (aside from providing a wealth of information, you can keep PE minimized and watch it among your notification icons to see at a glance how busy the CPU is and which process is using most of your CPU at any given time)

When un-minimized, you can use it to see all the gory detail for all processes. (note you can see it monitor how much disk paging you're doing (btw is your pagefile set large enough?) as well as indication of how much disk activity I/O. Note PE's process list will include a "pseudo-process" called Interrupts to let you see how much activity might be used by all your Hardware Interrupts

• Install Process Explorer
• Click Options and set Hide when Minimized, Allow Only One Instance, Confirm Kill, CPU History in Tray Icon
• Whenever PE is open, you can click CPU column header to see processes sorted by CPU usage. When usage high, check top of the list, OR
• Minimize PE. Note the red and green waves through its system tray icon
  • Green indicates total CPU usage
  • Red indicates the process using most the most the CPU time
  Hover cursor over the icon to get the info

Whenever total CPU usage seems high check which process(es) are using up most it

Thank you, LookinAround.
I'll have to try the process explorer out and hope it behaves differently than the Windows task manager, for now I've always had the Task Manager automatically start up with Windows and minimized to the system tray. One thing I find really wierd is that my CPU usage (looking at the box) doesn't show any green whatsoever. I see this especially when using Powerpoint and Publisher, the CPU usage is very low and then maybe 10-15 minutes later, the file finally loads up. I should have mentioned this originally, I hope something turns up when I finish the scanning tomorrow, for now, I don't really see anythng in the log files I posted earlier...

10-15 minutes later?? Is that a typo?? I'm assuming it doesn't take 10-15 minutes for the file to open??

Also, you can add Process Explorer to your startups and indicate /t for its command line argument. This will start it minimized as well

/* EDIT */
You might also find this link helpful in starting to learn your away around PE. (it can sometimes seem to almost overwhelm one with data!)
Let me know if you have any questions in using it and i will try to help as best i can

Ok, here are all the log files from my scans ( I deleted the 2 I posted yesterday just to keep them all together in 1 post. Avast came out clean with no issues, I inserted a jpg image since the log file was too large. MalwareBytes found a couple of items and they were corrected (don't know what they were, but they're in the log). My hard drive isn't fragmented as I do that at least once a week (needed or not) and as for the space, there is 36.2 GB free, 56.8 GB used. Now I will start to install the process explorer recommended by 'LookinAround' and see if that takes me anywhere. If anyone can go through the log files and see if they come up with anything, please let me know...

Oh, by the way, the 10-15 minutes, no unfortunately it wasn't a typo, and the CPU usage is low as it loads...

Attached Images

71609avast.JPG (46.9 KB, 3 views)

Attached Files

	hijackthis.txt (9.4 KB, 6 views)
	mbam-log-2009-07-15 (15-13-53).txt (1.1 KB, 4 views)
	SUPERAntiSpyware Scan Log - 07-16-2009 - 08-11-46.log (465 Bytes, 3 views)

Hey strategic...
I think I have found one of your issues...
A clue was in your other thread... http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic130633.html
I think you have left over drivers loading from your old NIC card...
... I think your new NIC is an Atheros? see ACS.exe. and ACU.exe

But it seems to me, from that 10-15 minute lag in trying to start/load an Office document, that you must have a process conflict somewhere. I wonder about all the running processes... If any are not absolutely necessary, stopping them should improve your performance. You will need to decide which you can accept not having "in the background". (cad/cam software, Toshiba utilities, etc).


The HJT log shows some other things that may be tweaked for better performance,
If you repost your logs in the virus and malware board, one of the malware removal experts should be able to help you out in this regard. They also will be able to find and eliminate malware if present. The basic scans have moved you in the right direction, but I don't know enough to help you with that issue.

How are you doing with Process Explorer? IT is a more powerful tool than task manager, and I was reluctant to recommend it since I am just learning it myself. I am glad LookingAround was able to get you started with it.

Hey B00kWyrm,
Sorry, the BCcode post was actually for another computer I helped with the diagnostics, but it was under warranty and it was taken care of. The Process Explorer is going great so far, I have it running now instead of taskmgr. I have already disabled realsched.exe with the Process Explorer ( a tip from http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windo...un-faster.html ). There are probably more processes I can eliminate, but I'll have to go through them. One thing I need to look at is my pagefile (but I currently don't remember how to get there I have no idea how I forgot that one!.) You have me thinking about the process confict, I have Open Office installed, but the problem originated way before then. Would it help maybe if I post the process tree from the Process Explorer?
Thanks a lot for your assistance

Hey, LookinAround, & B00kWyrm,
I just had a few minutes to try things out, and it looks like my MS Office is back to normal
So the only thing I did was run the scans, and install the Process Explorer remove the "realsched.exe" from the startup processes and cleaned the malware found by Malwarebytes in the registry (view log). So I guess now I'll post the Malwarebytes log file in the virus forum to see if I can get answer as to what they are? I personally don't think the '"realsched.exe' would have made that 'huge' of a difference...
Oh! one more thing I did was defrag the pagefile, something I have never done before, I always thought since it's constantly changing there was no sense? Maybe you can help clarify that one for me...

Thank you very much for your assistance...

Hey Strategic

Look at my two posts here and here to help understand how/why defragging your pagefile makes a difference (and why you might also want to resize and defrag it one last time where min=max pagefile size) based on your particular circumstance

/* EDIT */
btw.. so how much physical RAM memory do you have??? And just how large is your pagefile at the moment??

oops... That's what I get for identifying a process from memory... realsched-->Installed by RealPlayer not an NIC card...
I thought I recognized it as a realtek process... sorry about that.

No problem, and actually that does bring up another issue with my computer which I have placed on the side for now... the infamous BSOD... I believe there may be a conflict with my wireless adapter [Atheros AR5004X] it's been a while and the only thing I remember is the message "Bad_Pool_Header" at the top of the screen. I'll have to check within the coming days to see by chance if it was fixed with everything I have done so far, if not, I'll have to try to correct it (I know this isn't the right forum and I'm always plugged into the LAN which is why I haven't forced the issue).
Thanks for all the help.

Hey there, currently I have 896MB of RAM [1GB-shared w/video]. My pagefile initial size 1344MB, max. 2688MB. Currently allocated is 1344MB with 1341MB recommended [by OS]. When running my CAD/CAM, my CPU usage maxes out at 50-60% usage (this is because of how I have my hyper-threading setup. I changed it back because I didn't like the behavior. With my MS Outlook open, if I get emails while my CAD/CAM was working away, it would bog my system down completely sometimes to the point of 'not responding' until it catches up, that's why I switched it back, now I have resources for other apps running on the side. I could use a little more RAM, BUT I am eventually looking at another system.

Thank you for all your help, especially for the Pagefile defrag, it really made a difference!