Slow Laptop

[raro]

Here we go....I've got a nice HP lapop with 512 RAM and a 40 GB HDD and a Sampron 3100 proz running Win XP pro. The system is about one year old.

The computer appears very very slow. I downloaded some of Monty's wonderful tools, namely crapcleaner, Eusing registry cleaner and Advaced Windows Cleaner. They all found some stuff and nuked it, but the before/after effect was close to zero. Also booting up the laptop takes almost five minutes until the HDD light is off and everything loaded.

Opening a file by double-clicking it in the explorer window prompting to start up Open Office takes almost a minute until the file is open. On the office computer (also 512 MB RAM) it takes seconds.

At the moment, there are 55 processes running, with nine open programs. There is one process called "system" that takes some CPU performance but only 64K memory. Highest rank in the memory is Firefox with 85 MB but only two tabs open. Makes me wonder a bit, actually. The famous svchost is running six times.

I run AntiVir Guard, and Copernic Desktop Search in the background.

Does anybody has an idea how to fix that?

[Crossy]

I'll probably get flamed for this but here goes.

I've never seen any significant improvement from any of the 'cleaner' programs, all find stuff and 'fix' it, but as you note, sod all real effect.

IME the only guaranteed fix is to back up all your data and nuke the whole operating system. ie re-format and re-install everything. Unfortuately your PC never quite has the same 'feel' as before.

You may wish to combine the operation with installing a new HDD (put your old drive in an external box), then you can do a clean install on the new disk and copy your data across, has the advantage that if you forget something vital it's still sitting on the old drive waiting

Of course, this is my opinion, others may choose to differ.

[solo siam]

Antivir and the desktop search are probably taking up the most, You could also improve the speed by turning off unnecessary services, system restore etc....

Have you defragged? Try also turning windows appearance to performance, turning off any themes etc...

[Wolfie]

IME the only guaranteed fix is to back up all your data and nuke the whole operating system. ie re-format and re-install everything. Unfortuately your PC never quite has the same 'feel' as before.

Thats exactly what i would suggest...

back up all your personal data/stuff you wanna keep then format the drives and reinstall from scratch... its good practice to do this on a fairly regular basis anyway, i pretty much rebuild my PC once/twice a year

[palm]

Here we go....I've got a nice HP lapop with 512 RAM and a 40 GB HDD and a Sampron 3100 proz running Win XP pro. The system is about one year old.

The computer appears very very slow. I downloaded some of Monty's wonderful tools, namely crapcleaner, Eusing registry cleaner and Advaced Windows Cleaner. They all found some stuff and nuked it, but the before/after effect was close to zero. Also booting up the laptop takes almost five minutes until the HDD light is off and everything loaded.

Opening a file by double-clicking it in the explorer window prompting to start up Open Office takes almost a minute until the file is open. On the office computer (also 512 MB RAM) it takes seconds.

At the moment, there are 55 processes running, with nine open programs. There is one process called "system" that takes some CPU performance but only 64K memory. Highest rank in the memory is Firefox with 85 MB but only two tabs open. Makes me wonder a bit, actually. The famous svchost is running six times.

I run AntiVir Guard, and Copernic Desktop Search in the background.

Does anybody has an idea how to fix that?

1. Try running MSCONFIG.EXE and choose the [startup] tab. Scroll down the list to see and remove lots of startup junk that is not required - such as Acrobat, RealScheduler, Gamma, Office QuickLaunch, etc etc - you might find a LOT of stuff in your list, and some of it could hog a huge amount of resources and startup time. Use Google etc to search for program names you don't recognise etc.

On my system, I have 29 out of the 34 items in the list disabled and my Windows boots up very quickly. Obviously, keep your anti-virus software loading at startup.

2. Increase your RAM if possible to 1GB at least - Windows can run like a dog with 512MB of RAM. I use 2GB myself.

[sjaak327]

first of all, what is your cpu load, is svchost by any change taking up a high load, if so it might be the automatic update function, there are cases where this takes huge amounts of CPU usage when MS office is installed, and the fix provided by Microsoft doesn't work in all cases.

This is what is happening on one of my laptops, and a re-installation didn't help, neither did the fix from microsoft. The only resolution is de-installation of Office or disabling the auto update service.

Anyway to find out CPU usage, just ctrl+alt+delete, taskmanager, processes sort on CPU and make sure the tickboc for show all processes is ticked.

[geoffphuket]

IME the only guaranteed fix is to back up all your data and nuke the whole operating system. ie re-format and re-install everything. Unfortuately your PC never quite has the same 'feel' as before.

Thats exactly what i would suggest...

back up all your personal data/stuff you wanna keep then format the drives and reinstall from scratch... its good practice to do this on a fairly regular basis anyway, i pretty much rebuild my PC once/twice a year

Given time, every version of Windows that's ever been issued seems to gets slower and slower - I also resort to saving my data, reformating the drive and loading windows again

[raro]

Thanks a lot for all the replies in such a short time!

Defrag: I do that from time to time, but just as for those clener programs, it doesn't seem to make the comp any faster.

msconfig: That one was interesting! I booted out several processes, namely:

tfswctrl: HP's own drive letter assignment process. Superfluous!

imjpmig: For typing in Asian languages. Doesn't happen to me that often...

tintsetp: For writing in Chinese....see above

PicasaMediaDetector: Finally I found a way to turn that nuisance off!

Soundman: My soundcard is fried anyways, so why bother..

Unlocker Assistant: doesn't do what it promises, totally useless.

sgtray: supposed to remind me of backups but never did. Gone for good.

SDTrayApp: Spyware Doctor must not start with the system. or??

TaskSwitcchXP: Some fancy ALT+TAB stuff, came with my Windows. Nuked.

movie-XL: shows trailers from new movies in German cinemas. A must have! Especially without soundcard....nuked!

Still running are:

atiptaxx: Driver for the VGA card

avgnt: AntiVir, I feel better with it...

EabServ: Driver for the buttons on my laptop that I never really use

HP Wireless Assistant: Will the laptop still run with wireless LAN and Bluetooth without it?

PTHOSTTR: No idea what it is, better leave it untouched.

SynTPEnh: Touchpaddriver

vsnpstd: something for the webcam

mobsync: For synchronizing offline files. Needed in my case

DesktopSearch: Copernic. Cannot live without it.

ctfmon: language bar. Needed as I have to type in Görrmänn once in a while.

Now reboot.....will be back soon

[gharknes]

IME the only guaranteed fix is to back up all your data and nuke the whole operating system. ie re-format and re-install everything. Unfortuately your PC never quite has the same 'feel' as before.

Thats exactly what i would suggest...

back up all your personal data/stuff you wanna keep then format the drives and reinstall from scratch... its good practice to do this on a fairly regular basis anyway, i pretty much rebuild my PC once/twice a year

Given time, every version of Windows that's ever been issued seems to gets slower and slower - I also resort to saving my data, reformating the drive and loading windows again

usually because well all load our machines with a load of unneeded crap hogging resource

OP you mention firefox is using up lots of resourse, does your file take as long to open if you shut down all unnessary programs, can you take a screen shot of you task manager and programs that are running and post it here, uyse print screen key then paste into paint and save as jpg file.

I tend to disagree with the idea that a reinstall of OS fixes all, it is not actually true, yes an OS fresh install will certaintly perform faster but after you have installed all your crap again it will be no different. reInstalling the OS may not fix your problem, you could have a hardware fault, if for example you try and install XP and you have a disk problem you will be in a right old mess then.

Here is what I would do, find a benchmark you can use to measure (as you suggest above "opening a file")

1. Identify all programs and services running, make sure they are legit and needed. Task manager

2. uninstall any virus and anti spam software you have, uninstall anything you don't use or don't recognise) Add/remove programs

3. Check for any programs hogging large chunks of system memory (you mentioed firefox)

4. Start system in safe mode and Defrag your hard disk (system tools) check the speed this operation is performing (may indicate a hard disk problem)

check speed again and get back to us with results

BTW, I would not discount a hardware problem, lazy drive,

if you where in pattaya I'd come and have a look for you.

good luck

[gharknes]

Thanks a lot for all the replies in such a short time!

Defrag: I do that from time to time, but just as for those clener programs, it doesn't seem to make the comp any faster.

msconfig: That one was interesting! I booted out several processes, namely:

tfswctrl: HP's own drive letter assignment process. Superfluous!

imjpmig: For typing in Asian languages. Doesn't happen to me that often...

tintsetp: For writing in Chinese....see above

PicasaMediaDetector: Finally I found a way to turn that nuisance off!

Soundman: My soundcard is fried anyways, so why bother..

Unlocker Assistant: doesn't do what it promises, totally useless.

sgtray: supposed to remind me of backups but never did. Gone for good.

SDTrayApp: Spyware Doctor must not start with the system. or??

TaskSwitcchXP: Some fancy ALT+TAB stuff, came with my Windows. Nuked.

movie-XL: shows trailers from new movies in German cinemas. A must have! Especially without soundcard....nuked!

Still running are:

atiptaxx: Driver for the VGA card

avgnt: AntiVir, I feel better with it...

EabServ: Driver for the buttons on my laptop that I never really use

HP Wireless Assistant: Will the laptop still run with wireless LAN and Bluetooth without it?

PTHOSTTR: No idea what it is, better leave it untouched.

SynTPEnh: Touchpaddriver

vsnpstd: something for the webcam

mobsync: For synchronizing offline files. Needed in my case

DesktopSearch: Copernic. Cannot live without it.

ctfmon: language bar. Needed as I have to type in Görrmänn once in a while.

Now reboot.....will be back soon

just seeing this post now, what a right load of crap you have running there, don't just stop these progs from running - uninstall them, remeber what you have when you do a fresh install of OS.................nothing.

BTW PTHOSTRE is .............Adds Security Manager System Tray functionality - do you need this, does XP install it ?

[Farma]

This may be off at a tangent but your laptop sounds very similar in manufacturer, specs and age to the one my wife has.

It may be worth looking at if all else fails.

Over the past month or more she had a string of little intermittent problems finally leading up to the laptop not booting last week.

The problems have ranged from the battery not charging or slow to charge. (She rarely uses the laptop without mains power plugged in.)

Indications the battery was charged but had a short usage before needing recharge.

Slow operation.

Virtual memory too low.

She transferred all her files onto an external hard drive and had the IT guy clear out unwanted programs. These intermittent problems persisted.

The fault was the power adaptor. A new one purchased for 1,800 B and the computer is up and running again like new.

[gharknes]

a laptop will slow down when on battery power 50-70% to conserve energy, simple senario here is your machine was mostly on battery.

[raro]

Rebooted now, took 4:30 min after the log on (plus the time until the log on pops up). We are down to 38 processes now in the task manager.

Gharkness: I DO live in Pattaya! Will you come over to Monty's tomorrow? Let's establish a computer club with the main objective fixing raro's laptop under Monty's supervision...

It is an HP Compaq nx 6125 laptop, purchased in Germany early last year. I use it most of the time with the charger plugged in and no signs of problems there. Thanks to Farma for the hint anyways!

Now the test opening a document. A 16 KB spreadsheet, nothing special. Takes 15 sec after doubleclick on the file until the Open Ofice Logo pops up. Another 25 sec until it disappears and the OO window is visible and another 12 sec until the file is comletely loaded. Total 52 sec. That IS slow!

I am very reluctant to reinstalling the OS, as it will take a couple of days until everything works again as it should...then there is Linux....I am still tempted.....

[nikster]

I use CodeStuff Starter to clean out startup items - that will definitely improve startup times. Advantage over MSConfig is that it shows all information, like company that produced the software, and it has a right click menu which looks up what these tasks do on various internet services.

You can kick out the HP wireless assistant - that sounds like a replacement for the Windows Zero Config service. In most cases and despite the fact that everyone + dog likes to produce a replacement product, the standard Windows XP wireless dialog (WZC) is the best. Simple and functional.

My guess would be that your laptop is slow because:

- Copernic

- avgnt

- 512MB RAM - horrible

- Office auto update bug, as pointed out above

- 40GB HD - how full is this hard disk? Is it very full? The fuller a HD gets, the slower it gets - read up on it online before you reply "no way", I was surprised by this too, the speed difference is 2x for full vs empty. Also, the fuller it gets, the more difficult to defrag - you can analyze the disk and let us know how the fragmentation values.

I would suggest to do this:

- get another 512MB RAM. You need at least 768 or 1GB - both are drastically better than 512M. I found 512MB to be worse that 256, why I don't know.

- Upgrade your HD to a 5400 RPM 100GB model - those are cheap and reasonably fast. Best to buy this in a local shop and let them install it, this way they can copy the data for you, and they deal with IDE vs SATA and so on, don't do yourself. Make sure they format NTFS.

Those two things will have the most impact for the least money.

Of course, it could just be some software that's slowing things down - just try to run without Copernic/AV & uninstall Office, one at a time, and see if it makes a difference. Should be easy to find the culprit But my guess is you need more RAM and a faster HD to make a real impact.

[raro]

Thanks for the CodeStuff Starter, Nikster! Looks nice, never knew how much stuff is running in the ackground and proves again how bad MS's own tools (i.e. Task Manager) are!

Will take some time to check each indiviual service but will take the time to do it...it is ridiculous how much time you have to invest to make your comp a couple of seconds faster!

My 40 GB HDD has 14.7 GB empty space, that should be ok. All pics and other stuff I don't have to carry around are on the office server.

Will do som more testing and let you know!

raro

[monty]

I have this nagging feeling the whole problem is with your hard disk or the ide controllers.

Windows should not load that slow, and especially opening files shouldn't take that long!

My girlfriend recently bought a new laptop, an Acer with a fast AMD Turion dual core cpu, and a huge (for laptops anyway) 120GB hard disk. Major trade-off for all that storage is in the fact that the hard drive only runs at 4200rpm, and boy do you notice that.

The laptop is dead slow in loading windows, slow in starting programs and slow in loading files. Once everything's

loaded it runs fast, thanks to the fast cpu, but hard disk intensive stuff goes like a dog...

My old NEC laptop, running a humble 1.5 Ghz celeronM cpu feels much faster, thanks to the 40 GB, 5400 rpm hard disk!

[raro]

that sounds a bit familiar! Once everything is uploaded to the RAM, the computer runs ok. But loading is dead slow.

New HDD?

In that context, I just remember that at a certain point I was no longer able to watch videos from the DVD drive or even from a file. The video would not stream properly and the sound had a terrible echo. Totally forgot about it as the sound card anyways failed. That happened later and I know why...

I have no idea why th videos stopped streaming, as all users would say "it wasn't me..."

[monty]

That definitely sounds like a problem with your IDE drivers.

Both your hard drive and your DVD player are connected to your mainboard by means of an IDE port.

Almost looks like they are operating in PIO mode instead of the normal ultra dma mode.

Although I vaguely remember you checked that once, but my memory starts to fail a bit

[raro]

That definitely sounds like a problem with your IDE drivers.

Both your hard drive and your DVD player are connected to your mainboard by means of an IDE port.

Almost looks like they are operating in PIO mode instead of the normal ultra dma mode.

Although I vaguely remember you checked that once, but my memory starts to fail a bit

hmm....I think we were discussing this a whileago over a ...ermmm....beer....yes, my memory kicks in again. Didn't persue this any further as the soundcard gave up shortly after...but if those problems are related, I think I should look into this again...

Laptop Driver CD? Or where to look?

[monty]

OK, I'll try to make it simple

Control panel -> System -> click on "hardware" tab -> Click on "Hardware Manager" tab

expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI thread

Double click on Primary IDE channel

Click on the "Advanced Settings" tab

and then look what he "Current Transfer Mode" is for Device 0 and Device 1

Do the same for Secondary IDE channel.

Normally you should get:

Primary IDE channel, Device 0: Ultra DMA mode 5 which should be your hard drive

Primary IDE channel, Device 1: Not applicable

Secondary IDE channel, Device 0: Ultra DMA mode 1,2 or 3 which should be your DVD rom

Secondary IDE channel, Device 1: Not applicable

[raro]

Thanks a lot for the detailed description. Would never dare to click around in that area without guidance!

Partial success. The secondary channel was set to PIO only and I changed it to "DMA if available". However, the current mode is still set to PIO an doesn't change. Primary channel was set to DMA and current mode was indeed Ultra DMA mode 5 as described by Monty.

Startup was still 3:45 and and loading that spreadsheet with double click from the explorer took this time 56 seconds. Interstingly, this time were no other programs open. Last time I had Firefox already running.

[kayo]

Raro, I don't know much about this, but I've gotten to know you (you = raro, though admittedly I don't know much you for real) pretty well over the past year or two, nearly three... (time flies) , and frankly, you post so much <deleted> in forum 47, that i believe this is the cause. Try NOT posting in the TLW thread for a few... ever. System might stabilise.

Kindest, most helpful regards,

Klown.

[Gary A]

It sounds like the laptop is worth upgrading. I'd suggest buying a new fast hard drive. My Lenovo T43p has a 100 gig 7,200 RPM hard drive and it is pretty fast. I also have a gig of RAM.

[monty]

Bring the bugger along this afternoon

The secondary channel being PIO was the reason no DVD's could be played. The data transfer while in PIO is just to slow for that.

Shouldn't interfere with the hard disk operationality though which is correctly running in ultra DMA...

We'll see a bit later...

[raro]

Kayo old bugger! Clicked the wrong link or how did you get into a froum with serious content??

Now go back to giving your Hard Drives an oil massage, would you?

[raro]

thanks, Monty, will show up around 3-ish...looks like a loooooong day at Lake Maprachan.....

[gharknes]

Thanks a lot for the detailed description. Would never dare to click around in that area without guidance!

Partial success. The secondary channel was set to PIO only and I changed it to "DMA if available". However, the current mode is still set to PIO an doesn't change. Primary channel was set to DMA and current mode was indeed Ultra DMA mode 5 as described by Monty.

Startup was still 3:45 and and loading that spreadsheet with double click from the explorer took this time 56 seconds. Interstingly, this time were no other programs open. Last time I had Firefox already running.

you need to perform all tests with nothing else running, especially firefox, also shut down your antivirus and any other active protection you have enabled

[raro]

ok...spend an hour or so with Monty and some testing tools.

Looks as Copernic was the culprit. When it starts together with the computer it slows down everything. When I start it later individually, it doesn't have much of an impact.

Actually older versions of Copernic were much faster than the 2.x version I'm running now...

Will test this now for a couple of days. Thanks to all for your answers and expeciallly Monty for taking his time!

Cheers

raro

[Ajarn_Jonesy]

Thanks a lot for all the replies in such a short time!

Defrag: I do that from time to time, but just as for those clener programs, it doesn't seem to make the comp any faster.

msconfig: That one was interesting! I booted out several processes, namely:

tfswctrl: HP's own drive letter assignment process. Superfluous!

imjpmig: For typing in Asian languages. Doesn't happen to me that often...

tintsetp: For writing in Chinese....see above

PicasaMediaDetector: Finally I found a way to turn that nuisance off!

Soundman: My soundcard is fried anyways, so why bother..

Unlocker Assistant: doesn't do what it promises, totally useless.

sgtray: supposed to remind me of backups but never did. Gone for good.

SDTrayApp: Spyware Doctor must not start with the system. or??

TaskSwitcchXP: Some fancy ALT+TAB stuff, came with my Windows. Nuked.

movie-XL: shows trailers from new movies in German cinemas. A must have! Especially without soundcard....nuked!

Still running are:

atiptaxx: Driver for the VGA card

avgnt: AntiVir, I feel better with it...

EabServ: Driver for the buttons on my laptop that I never really use

HP Wireless Assistant: Will the laptop still run with wireless LAN and Bluetooth without it?

PTHOSTTR: No idea what it is, better leave it untouched.

SynTPEnh: Touchpaddriver

vsnpstd: something for the webcam

mobsync: For synchronizing offline files. Needed in my case

DesktopSearch: Copernic. Cannot live without it.

ctfmon: language bar. Needed as I have to type in Görrmänn once in a while.

Now reboot.....will be back soon

This can be disabled as well :::: See Below

ProcessName pthosttr.exe

Description

Internal Name pthosttr

File Description Adds Security Manager System Tray functionality

Comments

Original File Name pthosttr.exe

Query count 15

[raro]

thanks for that one! It is the HP security software as I understand now. I will also give it the boot and report later. I had it in the beginning running with all options, including the finger print scanner. Pain in the Arse! Took anything up to 20 times I had to run my finger over it until the laptop recognized me...