Very slow in a wierd way.

[Audette]

Hi guys,

I have a very strange problem which I hope somepne can shed some light on. My vaio S5M laptop was working quite well till last weekend when all of a sudden it started acting very slow. It took over 5 minutes for the startup and then once I click on IE or MS word or anything it would take around another 5 minutes to load up. When I was typing, the words wouldnt appear for ages.

Another problem I saw was that windows update stopped working. The icon saying its downloading updates comes up, but always remains at 0%. It wouldnt even connect to the windows update page.

In the task manager I noticed that svchost.exe was taking up most of the CPU time. But then again I guess this might be because the windows update was stuck.

I thought it might be a virus, scanned it with every possible scanner and found nothing.To be on the safe side I reinstalled windows and all the programs. After updating windows I found that it was still very slow. I read on a couple of forums that McAfee has a problem with its spamkiller which slows the PC down and also one of the windows updates were faulty. I got the fix for the windows update and uninstalled Mcafee which actually seemed to make matters worse.

I wiped the whole hard drive and reinstalled windows again. This time except for the sony applications the only other software I installed were MSOffice and Bitdefender. Now again it has a very slow startup, and after startup it takes another 5 minutes after clicking before any software is loaded. Multi tasking seems to be a big effort for the computer now, even though it might just be word, IE and media player.

Does anyone know of any diagnostic tools I can run to see if this may be something to do with the hardware or something, or does anyone has had similar experiances.

PS> sorry about the long post.

[davemee]

Does it get hot? Is the fan on a lot? If so, it may well be that it's clogged up with dust and dirt, try using a hoover or compressed air cans to dislodge and remove any dirt. This causes things to overheat, slow down, and fail (I usually do this on machines 12-24 months into their purchase to keep them ticking over nicely).

If you bring up task manager (right-click the windows taskbar where it's blank and pick 'task manager', or ctrl-del-del then click 'task manager'), go to the 'Processes' tab, and click the 'CPU' header to sort on that column. Is there a process there that remains at the top of the list, and uses a lot of CPU time (like 80-90%?) If so, there's either a bad programme on your machine, or a good programme that's got corrupted.

hth. that's where I'd look first.

[Audette]

Thank you for that suggestion. I will try it and let you know how it went.

Yes the fan is on all the time, and the right hand side of the palm top does heat up quite a bit.

In the task list it seems to be ok as to how the CPU is being shared. Sysmtem idle process takes over when am not doing anything as expected, and if I am using IE, it takes up about 50% of the CPU.

I'll try giving it a spring clean and see how it goes.

[Thalamus.]

Hi Audette

What is the normal running temperature of your vaio..?

If your unsure, mobilemeter is a handy application to use..

[Audette]

Hi guys,

After the spring clean I noticed the fan is very quiet and it doesnt heat up as much as before. The temperature now is around 40-45 when not doing anything.

The startup seems to have sped-up a bit. But still got problems trying to get several tasks running together. Even if it is just a couple of IE windows. I noticed that svchost.exe seemed to be taking up around 90% of CPU at times even when I am not updating the computer.

I am lost as to what I can do

[davemee]

Okay, well good news that the fan is whining less, bad news that it's not a perfect solution.

Look here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx and download Process Explorer. It gives you waaay more details than the Task Manager will, inclusding what processes are being run by things, allowing you to identify what executable is causing the problem, rather than just a generic process name.

I know that a machine, once made unstable, will only increase it's instability as delayed shutdowns, increased crashes, etc lead to file corruption and increased degradation.

out of interest, (1) is it this slow in safe mode? and (2) how much ram does it have?

hth! dave

[Thalamus.]

Hi Audette,

Have a look at Blencogo's suggestions in this thread ..

[Audette]

Ok, I got process explorer as well as another utility that was available to control the startup processes. I also took in the ideas from the website suggested by Thalamus, and now the startup is very quick. But once it loads up and I click on a program, it still takes a couple of minutes before anything loads. I have noticed that its worse on IE than other programs. Word and Media player might take only one minute.

In safe mode it is very quick to load the programs and didnt seem to struggle. I cant say how it would handle IE as my wireless will not load up in safe mode.

The computer has 512MB RAM. I know this is not much, but I never struggled like this before even with all the programs I normally use being installed. At the moment it only has the factory standard programs and the only extra are MS Office and Bit Defender.

[Thalamus.]

Did you check or try all of Blencogo's suggestions in the link I provided..?

[Audette]

Yes I have done everything said in the link you provided. My system still temporarily freezes when trying to load more than one program.