Tag Archives: tuning

computer slows down within 6 months

Computer Aid Posted on by

I helped a customer setup his internet link about 6 months ago (when he got a new computer).

After 6 months, I went back for a computer checkup.

The computer was running slower & he couldn’t understand why. It also had some shutdown & startup problems.

I ask a few questions, & it turns out that he has norton IS running, no viruses or spyware, lots of memory, and the computer is used for little else beyond a lot of internet surfing.

So, I start looking at temporary folders. Windows XP has 3 temporary folder areas:

  1. A main windows temp folder
  2. A user specific temp folder
  3. An Internet Explorer temporary area (also stores cookies & acts as a web page cache).

The first 2 are used by applications while running & during installation. The applications should remove their temp files when they close down, but it seems to happen rarely, so the temp folders just keep accumulating files. In one case, I ended up deleting 9900 files!!!

Although NTFS is a good file system, having more than a few hundred files in a folder can cause a noticeable slowdown whenever that folder needs to be accessed.

The IE temp folder/cache is worse, as it seems to be used for many different purposes, and there is a rarely publicised IE flaw that makes it worse: within internet options -> general tab, you can click the “delete files” button for temporary internet files… and although it should clear the cache folder, it leaves a lot of files behind.

And to top it all off, that slider you can use, to tell IE how much disk space to allocate to the cache: it doesn’t do anything! You can change it to allocate 1Mb of disk, & you can still end up with many hundreds of Mb used.

So, I manually clear the temp folders.

Clearing the IE temp folders cannot be done using windows explorer, So I use cachesentry to do the job. The first time it runs, it take 5 minutes to clear the cache!

The shutdown problem seems to be related to a program he installed, which monitors emails for spyware… Given that Norton IS also does the same thing, there is a likely conflict between the two programs.

The startup problem is not easy to fix. At powerup, The computer seems to freeze before the bios can do anything: you just get a blank screen. But after hitting the reset button, everything starts just fine. I put it down to a hardware or bios problem. Since tracking down the problem can take a while, & since it is just an “inconvenience” problem, the customer is happy to just leave it for now.

After that, its time for me to leave, so I ask the customer to run a defrag, and after that, the PC should be as quick as when he first bought it.

I’ll return in a few weeks, as he also needs cd/dvd writing software (don’t know why he didn’t get it when he first got the computer!)

untunable slow computer and brother mfc-215c problems

Computer Aid Posted on by

Now here is an odd “unfixable” problem.

A business customer was supplied (from “head office”) with a pentium 4, 1.7Ghz, 384Meg ram, 40Gb disk, system.

I was called in, because the CD was not working (even after it was sent back to be fixed), I just installed one of my spare CD drives & then they started installing their software.

I did notice the PC was fairly slow, but didn’t worry too much, as PCs are often slowed down for many reasons (which I can fix with some tuning).

I get called back the next day, as they are having problems starting an application they installed, and they cannot get the printer/scanner/fax to install.

I cannot find a solution to the application error… the error message is: “your system is not formatting dates correctly. qikkids cannot run until this is corrected. Format Error 03/01/2003 <> 01/03/2003”. I try changing the timezone from brisbane, to someplace in the US, but nothing changed.

The printer was plugged in to the usb port before the drivers were installed (many printers don’t like that), so I got a custom uninstall program from the Brother web site & uninstalled the drivers.

I then did a virus/spyware scan (found 2 infections… nothing major). Then did a full windows update, defragment, empty temp folders & ie cache, disable indexing service, disable some silly services (upnp, webclient, etc)… but oddly it was still quite slow… hmmm.

The PC looks like someone decided to remove software by deleting files… so it looks like it had been heavily used previously.

After my tuning, it takes about 2 minutes to boot. And changing the desktop background picture took 6 seconds (my pentium 3, 600Mhz take less that 1 second to change backdrops). The HDD light is on during the 6 seconds, so it looks like a disk problem.

Running filemon from sysinternals, shows that it spends some time trying to open files that don’t exist. So I do a registry clean, but that just drops the time to change screen backdrops to 5 seconds.

I’m all out of ideas, so I decide to recommend an inplace reinstall of xp (something I rarely recommend). Its easier to re-install all the windows files, that it is to find out whats missing/corrupt.

I now turn my attention to installing the printer/fax/scanner drivers. It goes without a hitch. At the end of the install, I need to restart windows, then I do a windows update, & download & install the latest brother drivers, reboot again, and after that, I’m greeted with a 16 colour, 640×480 desktop. Hmmm the video driver seems to be stuffed. I cannot increase the colours, & I can only go as high as 800×600.

I download & install the latest sis 650 video drivers, & everything starts looking normal. I reboot & I’m back to the low colur screen again… How can a printer driver stuff up the video drivers? anyway, I download a slightly different video driver, install & reboot, & I’m back to the low colour screen again… how annoying!

I unplug the printer, reinstall the video driver, reboot, & everything is fine. I reboot again, still ok. I plug in the printer… still ok. I reboot & I’m back to the low-colour screen. Grrr.

I check the video drivers & find more recent drivers ( but NOT at the SIS website!). I download, install, & reboot (without the printer attached), & its fine, I plugin the printer… it works ok, I reboot again (the slow boot time is really starting to annoy me!). Luckily everything now works.

I reboot a few more times & the screen is stable, except I occasionally get a window popping up every 15 seconds, saying something like “beginning auto insert device”, then disappearing after 1 or 2 seconds. I unplug the printer & the message goes away. I plug the printer in & the messages don’t come back until after the next reboot. I fiddle with the printer power-saving button, after a few more reboots, the problem no longer happens. I figure its something not working well with the built in flash card reader in the printer.

I give the computer back, & a few hours later I suddenly realise that “date/time settings” for XP can be changed in 2 different ways… the control panel “date and time” and also “Regional & Language options”. I call the customer & get her to change the regional settings from US to Australia, & QikKids now works. She is very happy.

I don’t think the slow computer will be a problem for the customer, so I probably wont get to fix it anytime soon.