CPU easily maxes out in WinXp Pro, IE slow loading

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by TimCraig

I've had the happen to several of my computers although your mileage may vary. There's a program that XP starts named ciscv.exe which monitors the program that does disk indexing to keep it from going wild. The only problem is that ciscv.exe sometimes goes off its nut and takes over. Open MyComputer and right click on the hard disks to bring up their properties, if the check box at the bottom "Allow Disk Indexing..." isn't checked, this isn't your problem. If it is, you can try unchecking it and pressing apply. Do it for all directories and files. This may take a few minutes.

Another way is to open the task manager and kill cisvc.exe and see if your computer acts more normally. If it does, then do the above. No harm since Windows will restart it next boot if this isn't your cause.

The box was checked, but unchecking it and letting it do its thing didn't help, and I there was no cisvc.exe running.

[Michael Hill]

IB Mac Elitists

[neo]

i agree with all the "Norton is bad and such" posts. Norton is nothing but trouble when it comes to system load (especially at boot). i'd say get rid of everything norton and symantec and install something such as AVG Free or the like.

[LordTalps]

Originally Posted by neo

i agree with all the "Norton is bad and such" posts. Norton is nothing but trouble when it comes to system load (especially at boot). i'd say get rid of everything norton and symantec and install something such as AVG Free or the like.

Norton is... interesting. For getting a job done, it does its job. It just does it in a very slow, and not cool manner.

The nicest thing I can do for my computer is keep my processes list shorter than the default window size of the Task Manager (ctrl+alt+delete window). You know pretty quickly if you have some nasty viruses/programs installed on your computer.

[ahecht]

First, I've seen many computers that slow down because they have norton running. Between the antivirus scanning every file that is modified on the comptuer and things like the firewall and spyware protection constantly running, it can quickly bog down a system. However, if you say you disabled all startup items, I assume that includes norton, so that's probably not your problem.

One possability is that you have a virus or spywre which has installed itself as a rootkit. A Rootkit modifies the way your computer access teh hard drive and memory so that is is almost completely hidden. You can detect (although not remove) rootkits using Sysinternals' free RootkitRevealer.

[6600gt]

Download CCleaner and clean the registry.
Then download abexo free registry cleaner and run it.
Finally defrag everything.

Norton is actually rated one of the best utilities out there but I think it's to bloated (designed for the average person).

[Michelle Celio]

Originally Posted by 6600gt

Download CCleaner and clean the registry.
Then download abexo free registry cleaner and run it.
Finally defrag everything.

Norton is actually rated one of the best utilities out there but I think it's to bloated (designed for the average person).

Uhm...How about you leave your registry alone?
Most registry "cleaning" programs, again do more damage than they fix.
--
Anyway, what steps have you taken to correct this problem? *just so we're not all here telling you the same thing over and over again...*

[Adam Richards]

Sanddrag, could you post a HijackThis (http://www.merijn.org/files/hijackthis.zip) logfile for everyone to see? It'll give us a better idea of what possibly might be causing the problem on your computer. Thanks!

[Mike AA]

I am actually surprised no one has said this.

Here's an old windows trick. Run Scandisk.

• In XP, open up my computer.
• Right click your main drive (usually says local disk (C).
• Click on properties.
• Click on the tools tab.
• Click within the Error checking divided window, the button "check now" then click start, let it run until complete you should get some prompts.

I had the EXACT same problem you are having, come to find out during a reboot or power outage windows did a weird remirror of most of the harddrive. All of the files were copied but hidden so there were 2 of nearly every file. I figured this out, some other way than running scan disk but it solved the problem, after I had reinstalled windows on another harddrive thinking the drive was shot.

-Mike

[6600gt]

Originally Posted by Michelle Celio

Uhm...How about you leave your registry alone?
Most registry "cleaning" programs, again do more damage than they fix.
--
Anyway, what steps have you taken to correct this problem? *just so we're not all here telling you the same thing over and over again...*

The registry fills up with too much grabage(links that lead to to know where)

The usual spyware and virus cleaning never really sped up system anymore.

Its was only when after cleaning the registry and doing heavy defraging using Diskeeper 10 ( trial version) that I really started noticing a difference.
Only thing better is a full reinstall. I haven't had any problems with these two programs I am using right now. CCleaner seems to be the less intrusive ones(finds fewer problems than the abexo one)

How much RAM are you running?

If it was a sudden drop in performance then it could be something more serious...

Only after heavy defraging did I notice a drop in the amount of suttering in Battlefield 2.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I really hope there's a fix to this without having to do a reinstall. My dad's computer is running really slow. Internet Explorer and Firefox are both incredibly slow to open (firefox more so). Microsoft office applications appear to open fairly normally. Internet explorer is incredibly slow to load pages. Firefox isn't too bad. Internet explorer maxes out the CPU at 100% for a good while when it loads a page like www.msn.com or www.dailynews.com. Firefox loads up the CPU quite a bit but doesn't quite max it out. On my computer, those pages load very quickly without any problems. His computer is a 1.8HGz Pentium 4 with 1GB RAM. I've deleted temporary internet files and have run Spybot, Adaware, and Norton which didn't really find anything. There have never been any obvious signs of malware on the computer. I've tried disabling all startup items and killing off other running processes. I've tried disabling 3rd party browser extensions. I've tried a new user account. Problem persists. In safe mode everything works a lot better, but we all know that safe mode is not a primary working environment. As far as I know, nothing new was installed recently. I really can't figure out what is causing it. Any help is greatly appreciated. And no "get a mac" or "switch to ubuntu" are not options.

If it truely is just access to the internet, then do the following:
1> In addition to deleting the temporary internet files, also delete the cookies (this may lose your passwords if you've saved them on your PC) and the history.
2> If you have any toolbars added (MSN, Google, Yahoo, etc) remove them. Dont just disable them, delete them (add/remove programs) since some still load into memory and send data to the internet even while disabled.
3> search through your windows directory for a temp directory. Sometimes windows creates temp files and then 'forgets' to delete them (loading them every time. Inside that temp directory there may be some folders (might be inside the folder Content IE5) with odd names such as 'G7IFEZO5'. Delete them (this will not harm your system and if IE needs it windows will recreate it). *NOTE* there will still be cookies and temp internet files even if you deleted them in step 1. Delete all these too.
4> check your connection speed at http://reviews.cnet.com/7004-7254_7-0.html and match it against your expected connection speed. If it is not where it should be then check your (DSL/Cable/telephone) modem or your ISP.

If it's not just the internet then:
1> Run disk cleanup
2> Run scandisk.
3> Run defrag.
4> Check available space on the drive (too small will cause difficulty caching)

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I really hope there's a fix to this without having to do a reinstall. My dad's computer is running really slow. Internet Explorer and Firefox are both incredibly slow to open (firefox more so). Microsoft office applications appear to open fairly normally. Internet explorer is incredibly slow to load pages. Firefox isn't too bad. Internet explorer maxes out the CPU at 100% for a good while when it loads a page like www.msn.com or www.dailynews.com. Firefox loads up the CPU quite a bit but doesn't quite max it out. On my computer, those pages load very quickly without any problems. His computer is a 1.8HGz Pentium 4 with 1GB RAM. I've deleted temporary internet files and have run Spybot, Adaware, and Norton which didn't really find anything. There have never been any obvious signs of malware on the computer. I've tried disabling all startup items and killing off other running processes. I've tried disabling 3rd party browser extensions. I've tried a new user account. Problem persists. In safe mode everything works a lot better, but we all know that safe mode is not a primary working environment. As far as I know, nothing new was installed recently. I really can't figure out what is causing it. Any help is greatly appreciated. And no "get a mac" or "switch to ubuntu" are not options.

what worked for me were three programs from PC Tools, spyware doctor, anti-virus and registry mechanic all of which offer 30 day full function free trials.

The big name Norton products obviously were not catching some spyware and it was busy working away and slowing my machine down to the point I was thinking it might be time for a new computer.

I ran the Pc tools products and solved the problem and then ran a little utility called CW shredder and solved a few more problems.

Then after doing a little google searching I found that you can go into RUN and type SERVICES.MSC and turn off certain things that you don't need and let me tell you after do that this old laptop is running with more speed and power than I need.

Of course now I have a new problem, can't run defrag, window pops up and says to run chksdk /f and running that doesn't make the problem go away....so I have a little problem of my own to solve.

but really I suspect you have a spyware infestation....those symptoms are identical to what I had and that spyware stuff accumulates over time and it uses up resources...not to mention the risks.

[sanddrag]

It turned out to be Symantec Realtime Protection slowing everything down for some odd reason. So, I'll reinstall Symantec and hopefully that'll fix that.

[Cody Carey]

May I suggest replacing your current Virus software with ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite?

It is a VERY nice all-around computer protection program, and I think that it only costs something around $15/Yr for updates. If you don't like paying anything, they have a free 15-day trial for download that you can install and run every once-in-a-while to clean up your computer, and then just go back to using your old virus coverage.(If you do this, make sure the programs aren't running at the same time)
Also, Defrag regularly and try to avoid messing with registry cleaners, as there is a possibility of them harming your computer more than it already is, although if you invest in a very useful program called TuneUP Utilities, It makes registry backups and gives you the ability to boot windows directly from the backups, which is useful indeed.
If your computer stays slow after you run a trusty Virus/malware program, and you know approximately when your problems started occurring, you can always do a search yourself:
Open the windows default search utility and search for "*.exe" under the advanced tab,set the "Created" date to just before you first started having problems and search. If your search returns a number of programs with names such as "aaaaaaaa.exe", or "555555555.exe" in your Windows or System folders,then you are probably still infected with some virus or malware, in which case you should look for a better virus removal program. You probably don't want to delete random files from your hard drive, however... so trying to take care of it yourself may not be a great Idea.

Sorry if this is a little late, But ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite Has never let me down...

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Cody C

May I suggest replacing your current Virus software with ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite?

Heck no. Absolutely not. I hate Zone Alarm with a passion and I'm sure I'm not the only one.