PC performance is very slow

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Hi,

I am using a system with MSI motherboard model K7N2G-L. CPU is Athlon 2400Ghz. Memory 1.5GB (Corsiar DDR2 512 x 3). Graphic card is Albatron GF4 Ti4200 with 128mb. No overclocking was done. My system has a DVD-RW drive, DVD-Rom drive, 2 units of internal IDE hard disk and an external USB hard disk with independent power adapter. System PSU true power is at 350W.

I'm already using this PC for more than 7 years now. I know that this system is already old. But I mainly use this system to surf net, do assignments and watch movies from hard disks. It was fine for my type of usage until recently.

3 weeks back, my system which was working fine suddenly (within an hour) became so slow that even moving mouse cursor is not smooth anymore.

For example a single file (700 mb) transfer from one partition to another or external HD will take hours to complete. If I do multiple file transfer (~4 gb) the system will simply hang after about an hour without even completing the 1st file transfer. Watching movies from hard disk is torture.

Suspecting some programs (which I installed recently) might have corrupted the registry; I did formatting of my C drive and installed fresh Windows XP Pro SP 2. Once I finished installing, my PC was back to normal. However when I downloaded and installed all latest software which I was using previously, my PC became noticeably slow. But it was still fine. When Automatic Windows update finished updating my OS to XP – SP3, my PC already started showing the original symptoms. This eventually will go bad to worse.

I even bought latest Windows XP SP3 CD pack and tried fresh installation again. Still same.

Surprisingly, from task manager I noticed my CPU usage is not high. On average idle condition it will be around 5%. When I start, for example firefox, it’ll go up about 100% but only for brief moment than it drops back to 10%. When I do file transfer, CPU usage will be at 15% most. When I watch movie, it’ll hover around 30% - 75%. There will be around 800mb of Ram still available when I’m running these applications.

I’m not sure what is causing my PC to run so slow. I even changed from Avast to Norton IS 2010, updated and scanned the all the harddisk. Another symptom is when I stress my PC by running more than 3 applications like file transfer/copy, surf internet, downloading and at same time open/play movie, the PC will struggle to work for short period than suddenly restart as if there is a power failure.

Note: I changed my PSU 4 years ago since the 1st one failed.

Sorry for these long comment. I’m just frustrated and exhaust of idea to move forward.

Can anybody suggest how to overcome this? Thanks.
 
Hopefully you're using an LUA account to access the net and not an Admin.

get a list of programs that are running
run->tasklist >myTasks.txt​

follow-up and attach myTasks.txt which will be located at %userprofile%\myTasks.txt
 
ususally, the disk does not degrade in performance over time, given that perodically you defrag it.

it is far more likely that you
  • have too many programs running
  • have too little memory
  • or have a trojan/virus lerking in the system
 
Hi Guys,

Thanks for your reply. I've uploaded the tasklist.txt. However I'm pretty sure that I was running more programs previously without any problem.

You mentioned that it may due to hard disk. MSI mobo BIOS has SMART harddisk enabled. So it should warn me if the harddisk is failing, right?

But I do admit that as far as I could remember, I've never defrag-ed my hard disks. Whenever I tried to defrag, the software always suggest that it's not necessary.

I've also read somewhere that if my PC's PSU's 12V line is deteriorating than harddisk will slow down. Effecting overall system performance. By the way PC alert record shows that 12V line fluctuate at 11.58 - 11.52. My 5v line is very stable at 5v. 3.3v fluctuate at 3.17 - 3.20. And Vcore will fluctuate at 1.60 -1.66 but most of the time it'll be stable at 1.62.

Anyway, I'll run my Norton IS 2010 again to scan all HD partitions and external HD.

Thanks.
 

Attachments

  • myTasklist.txt
    2.7 KB · Views: 4
my analysis

VProTray.exe
Down to end-user requirements. This task normally uses anything between 5Mb to 16Mb of memory.
If you decide that you do not want this task running, turning it off from within the Tools \ Options
menu option is not enough as all that does is remove the icon from the System Tray,
but the task continues to run in the background. Thus, to prevent it from starting at Windows boot-up altogether,
and therefore running in the background, disable it on the Startups tab.
run->msconfig​

bitcomet.exe
Finding a program by the name of bitcomet.exe running on your computer means that your
computer may be infected with a worm that goes by the name of tibick.

bitcomet.exe is considered to be a security risk, not only because antivirus programs flag Tibick Worm
as a virus, but also because a number of users have complained about its performance.

Tibick Worm is likely a virus and as such, presents a serious vulnerability which should be fixed immediately!
Delaying the removal of bitcomet.exe may cause serious harm to your system and will likely cause a
number of problems, such as slow performance, loss of data or leaking private information to websites.

for removal, see Tibick

MsPMSPSv.exe
MsPMSPSv.exe is an unecessary update function for MS Media Player
run->msconfig​
 
Hi Jobeard,

Thanks for your comment. I've already uninstalled bitcomet and did full scanning of all my hard-drives. Internet Security Norton 2010 can't find any virus or worm as you mentioned.

(FYI, total physical RAM is 1.5 GB in three modules (512 MB x 3). From task manager the available RAM is 900 MB)

However my PC is still very slow. By the way, the symptoms of PC suddenly blackout is increasing.

Now whenever the PC black out or I did restart, the system will start but as soon as the Windows XP logo appears it will black out again. And than the restart will bring to the Safemode page. (the page we normally access by pressing F8). From there any options you select will enter you in the same loop again (safemode page). It wont log on to windows.

However if you unplug the power supply, wait for about an hour than start back the PC, than it will start properly.

This is the situation I'm in for past week.

What is going on with my PC?
 
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