BlackDragonHun
Geek Trainee
Okay, so... I got a nice, new computer this Christmas, and it's all been running great until about now. Here're the specs on it to start:
3.20 GHz Intel Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading
16 KB primary memory cache
2048 KB secondary memory cache
300.06 GB Usable Hard Drive Capacity
144.64 GB Hard Drive Free Space
_NEC DVD_RW ND-3500AG [CD-ROM drive]
AXV CD/DVD-ROM SCSI CdRom Device [CD-ROM drive]
HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8526B [CD-ROM drive] <-- Virtual drive created by Alcohol 120%
ST3300631AS [Hard drive] (300.07 GB) -- drive 0
4x 512 MB DDR2 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS 256 MB
Board: Intel Corporation D945PVS AAC98862-205
Serial Number: BTVS53600636
Bus Clock: 200 MHz
BIOS: Intel Corp. SN94510J.86A.0044.2005.0711.1450 07/11/2005
I'm running Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 2, fully up-to-date.
Here's a little bit of background on the programs that get run on the computer on a daily basis:
KidsWatch Time Control: Installed by my father to try to restrict the length of time used on the computer; causes automatic logouts after certain times or certain lengths of time logged in each week. Has issues with changing the system clock and not allowing it to be changed back. Due to the altered system date, I am unable to complete Windows Genuine Advantage verification.
DiskKeeper Disk Defragmenter: Set to defragment the hard drive every night; and it seems to be doing its job, from what I've seen. Program says it'll run every 2 hours from 10 PM to 4 AM every night. Job reports say it's been running, but I'm almost always logged out during those times due to KidsWatch, so I'm not exactly sure how it is.
Spyware Doctor: Used to protect against spyware because my program of choice, Ad-Aware, has been blocked by my father through KidsWatch.
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition: Self-explanatory
Windows Defender: Also self-explanatory
Okay, anyway, to the problem:
I just got out of a spell where the computer was plagued by the VirtuMonde adware family. Not fun, but I got rid of it. After the infection was over, I began seeing some very limited-scope slowdown. After an automatic logout by KidsWatch, or a manual logout by myself, trying to click on my username to enter my password on the Windows login screen takes about 45 seconds to highlight my name, and another fifteen to display the password I'm typing. Loading my personal setting takes several minutes, whereas before this it would take not more than ten seconds to run the entire process. A login after a reboot will yield a full-speed login screen, but still an extended loadtime.
Second issue, and the only other place I've found slowdowns: When I am trying to run a bittorrent-based program, the software will freeze and slowdown exceptionally; it is impossible to monitor the file transfers.
Twice since then has Windows said it needs to increase the size of my virtual page file, though I can't figure out why.
I have no memory leaking; I'll watch Task Manager and the biggest memory hog is Firefox, who is right now using 84,696 K, but nothing's using any CPU time. The highest CPU usage I usually get is while running World of Warcraft, which will use about 40-45% of the CPU, and probably 380,000K memory at any given time. But it performs like so: I get upwards of 60- to 80-frames-per-second while playing. No slowdowns.
I've looked over my running processes half a dozen times, and I can't see anything there that shouldn't be there. I've got virus and spyware scans set to run when I can.
My friend suggested it may possibly be a hard-drive issue, but I ran chkdsk and it didn't find anything wrong, and my disk defragmenter shows it running at near-optimal performance.
Any ideas? I know this is an enormous wall of text, but I tried to get all relevant information I could think of out there so you could look at it.
Thanks
--BlackDragonHunt
EDIT: Updated the World of Warcraft running info: I had it written down from memory, and I got some numbers a bit mixed up; this is from it running right now.
3.20 GHz Intel Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading
16 KB primary memory cache
2048 KB secondary memory cache
300.06 GB Usable Hard Drive Capacity
144.64 GB Hard Drive Free Space
_NEC DVD_RW ND-3500AG [CD-ROM drive]
AXV CD/DVD-ROM SCSI CdRom Device [CD-ROM drive]
HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8526B [CD-ROM drive] <-- Virtual drive created by Alcohol 120%
ST3300631AS [Hard drive] (300.07 GB) -- drive 0
4x 512 MB DDR2 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS 256 MB
Board: Intel Corporation D945PVS AAC98862-205
Serial Number: BTVS53600636
Bus Clock: 200 MHz
BIOS: Intel Corp. SN94510J.86A.0044.2005.0711.1450 07/11/2005
I'm running Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 2, fully up-to-date.
Here's a little bit of background on the programs that get run on the computer on a daily basis:
KidsWatch Time Control: Installed by my father to try to restrict the length of time used on the computer; causes automatic logouts after certain times or certain lengths of time logged in each week. Has issues with changing the system clock and not allowing it to be changed back. Due to the altered system date, I am unable to complete Windows Genuine Advantage verification.
DiskKeeper Disk Defragmenter: Set to defragment the hard drive every night; and it seems to be doing its job, from what I've seen. Program says it'll run every 2 hours from 10 PM to 4 AM every night. Job reports say it's been running, but I'm almost always logged out during those times due to KidsWatch, so I'm not exactly sure how it is.
Spyware Doctor: Used to protect against spyware because my program of choice, Ad-Aware, has been blocked by my father through KidsWatch.
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition: Self-explanatory
Windows Defender: Also self-explanatory
Okay, anyway, to the problem:
I just got out of a spell where the computer was plagued by the VirtuMonde adware family. Not fun, but I got rid of it. After the infection was over, I began seeing some very limited-scope slowdown. After an automatic logout by KidsWatch, or a manual logout by myself, trying to click on my username to enter my password on the Windows login screen takes about 45 seconds to highlight my name, and another fifteen to display the password I'm typing. Loading my personal setting takes several minutes, whereas before this it would take not more than ten seconds to run the entire process. A login after a reboot will yield a full-speed login screen, but still an extended loadtime.
Second issue, and the only other place I've found slowdowns: When I am trying to run a bittorrent-based program, the software will freeze and slowdown exceptionally; it is impossible to monitor the file transfers.
Twice since then has Windows said it needs to increase the size of my virtual page file, though I can't figure out why.
I have no memory leaking; I'll watch Task Manager and the biggest memory hog is Firefox, who is right now using 84,696 K, but nothing's using any CPU time. The highest CPU usage I usually get is while running World of Warcraft, which will use about 40-45% of the CPU, and probably 380,000K memory at any given time. But it performs like so: I get upwards of 60- to 80-frames-per-second while playing. No slowdowns.
I've looked over my running processes half a dozen times, and I can't see anything there that shouldn't be there. I've got virus and spyware scans set to run when I can.
My friend suggested it may possibly be a hard-drive issue, but I ran chkdsk and it didn't find anything wrong, and my disk defragmenter shows it running at near-optimal performance.
Any ideas? I know this is an enormous wall of text, but I tried to get all relevant information I could think of out there so you could look at it.
Thanks
--BlackDragonHunt
EDIT: Updated the World of Warcraft running info: I had it written down from memory, and I got some numbers a bit mixed up; this is from it running right now.
