odd windows problem...

[Ormorof]

im having problems with windows being incredibly slow, ive only been having this problem for a few days, basically the taskbar, startmenu and task manager all seem to take about 10 minutes to load up, at first i thought it was just AVG going crazy but now im not so sure, i cant figure out if its something nabbing at all the memory because the taskmanager wont load until whatever is slowing everything else down is finished!

when its running fine everything appears ok, then randomly ill press a button on taskbar and everything will stop again, start menu freezes, quicklaunch freezes and i cant do anything there, i can still alt-tab between windows and use the internet and access my hard-disks via desktop shortcuts but its kinda annoying not being able to use the taskbar at all!

anyone got any ideas of what i should be checking?

 

[Jonty]

Hi Ormorof

Try booting up in safe mode; if the problem still persists then you're in trouble, hehe. If it goes away in safe mode then use the opportunity to check the usual suspects: recent driver changes, software updates, malware infections etc. Not very helpful, I know, but it's a strange problem. Good luck!

Kind regards

 

[MYstIC G]

How many programs have you got installed?

 

[Ormorof]

How many programs have you got installed?

only things that run on start-up (apart from standard windows ones) are zonealarm + AVG

its not happened since this morning now though which i guess is typical!

 

[Guest]

omg rofl @ Zonealrm, get rid of it asap, it breaks, try uninstalling zone alarm properly and test your pc speed (obviously when you are not connected to the net)

its pants.com software imho

 

[dysfunction]

I agree ZoneAlarm used to be good but it now sucks the life out of any PC.

If you need a software firewall get something else. ZA isnt the way!

 

[MYstIC G]

Can sometimes happen after a windows update. Try running that and installing everything that's required. Also as everyone else has already said, ditch ZoneAlarm, it's now shit.

 

[Ormorof]

what to use instead then?

 

[nath]

what to use instead then?

XP Service Pack 2 inbuilt firewall + a NAT enabled router (which is basically all routers). That plus decent anti virus which you've got with AVG and some common sense with respect to the files you download and view and you'll be fine.

 

[dysfunction]

Or you can give this a go...

Comodo™ Free Firewall Software Download

 

[Cromcruaich]

Pipe up if problem resurfaces - sounds like something is causing windows explorer to lock up.

Lots of things can cause this - from unresponsive mapped network drives, to viruses and malware - to multimedia applications 'helping' by deciding to go off and index your 20000 strong mp3 files stored on your NAS device.

 

[smurkin]

Aye, I've had symtpoms like that three times. Once it was Toshiba Hotkeys which was broken, a second time it was an HP printer driver faulty, and the third time it was a goddam awful rootkit virus that was tough to clean. You could try invoking task manager to stop processes running while its hanging to identify the bad process/program.

Then again, ZA is utter pants. I found it running on my machine after I'd uninstalled it and blocking all sorts of things

 

[xane]

Nuts, I just started a thread on Comodo.

Getting rid of ZoneAlarm has sped up my system a treat, also getting rid of some old bluetooth drivers hanging around too made startup a lot quicker.