P805D slows to a crawl

[DrJeff]

I'm stumped. Not a novice on PCs; been building my own for years.

Office eMachines with Pentium 805D, 2G ram, plenty HD, internal graphics, wired 100Mbps networking to business DSL (hitting 1.5Mbps DL speed).

The last few weeks, with only Firefox open (multiple tabs open, using > 200mb active memory), websites take forever to load, like 30 secs before they pop to visible. Thunderbird mail loads as quick as ever. I open the CPU utilization window to check and the P805D is pegged at 100% doing nothing more than browsing. Walking back to my desk with PC idle, util. will be at 30%. I have done many scans with McAfee, Lavasoft's AdAware (site DLed, not a scam site), S&D, Conficker checker. Most of the processes time is being spent on Firefox and Teatimer.

Any ideas? Besides the obvious Firefox bashing? I run Firefox on all my machines and no other has this problem. I was about to look for a newer faster office machine, but said wait a minute, this is not hardware.

Thanks in advance,
Jeff

 

[mpilchfamily]

Sounds like a Malware or virus problem. You can try a few differnt scans but likely you will be better of performing a fresh install of the OS.

 

[Pantlegz]

I was kind of thinking the same thing but S&D is good about spyware and McAfee is decent, maybe try an avast scan. Does it do the same thing with different browsers? try a new machine on the same port, maybe it's a network thing?

 

[Matt1970]

I would first run Checkdisk. If that doesn't do it, start disabling stuff. I would suspect McAfee first, then maybe Teatimer. Run MSCONFIG and start disabling startup programs. If none of those fix it, I would restore the system to about a month ago. Some people are a little leary about windows sysytem restore but I have seen it fix many a problem.

 

[DrJeff]

All good ideas. Thanks for helping me think outside my box.
I hate trying to freshen the OS on those eMachines that just come with a restore disk. It wipes everything! I hate the reinstalling apps.
I probably have not done all of these things in any one session, come to think of it, because I usually come in with little PC toolbelt time before my real workday gets me busy doing revenue-producing things. I have to allocate some time...

 

[Pantlegz]

Just an idea to help save time reinstalling the OS, make a base image with all the basic programs/drivers installed so if you get a new computer all the settings are in that image. It really helps, I found this out after having my e-mail server at school die on me 3 times and having to manually reconfigure everything. image it and use something similar to Norton Ghost to get in on the machine.

TeaTimer is S&D's process, Mcafee shouldn't kill browser speed. All system restore does is reset the registry entry's it can help but most of the time it's a waste of time.

 

[DrJeff]

Well, S&D, AdAware, and McAfee's did find some stuff, and CHKDSK did a run that took FOREVER. But I can't say all was well after that. Tomorrow, I am going to restart in diagnostic and turn off some startup stuff little by little until I discover the resource hog.

 

[Pantlegz]

try to download avast antivirus and have it run it's boot scan. The worst part of adware and viruses is they're a pain to get rid of, it might be fastest to format and reload.

 

[DrJeff]

Avast actually found a trojan in the Windows dir on its boot scan that the others had missed, but it did not fix the crawl.
Anyone know of a mobo part failure that could cause this slowdown? It is a 2 year old eMachines, BTW.
I still have not gotten to rolling back to an earlier restore point or reinstalling over the old Windows.

 

[InflatableBuddha]

Random idea, but is the Pent D possibly overheating and throttling itself down, so everything runs slower?

If the machine hasn't had the compressed air treatment in 2 years, it could be quite dusty. All of the eMachines I've seen don't have particularly well-ventilated cases either, and the Pentium D's are known to run very hot anyways.

 

[DrJeff]

Good thought. It is in a dust-bunny infested area. I will suck out those little buggers and see what happens.

 

[Matt1970]

Originally posted by: DrJeff
CHKDSK did a run that took FOREVER.

That tends to point to a hardware failure most likely the hard drive. CHKDSK will run before any spyware loads up so you can rule that out as well as startup programs.

 

[DrJeff]

Well, it was not the dust bunnies. The thing was pretty clean. CPU temp before and after the suck out was in high 50's Celsius, I guess not bad for a stock clocked P805D with OEM cooler. On the HD failing idea, would that slow down browser loading pages or make the CPU stay maxed >90% utilization? Just thinking out loud...