AboutDave Mitch Expertise Trouble shooting in any of the following areas: Virus / Spy-ware / Mal-ware issues, Windows, Linux, virtual environments such as VMWare, Virtual ToolBox. Vast and varied hands-on expertise in a range of open source network security tools and utilities.Have worked on projects requiring practical implementation and configuration tweaking of Intrusion Detection / Prevention Systems, Enterprise-class Patch Management Solutions, Customization of Network Audit Framework and Penetration Test Tool Compilation. Consultant for corporations, NOCs (network Operations Centres) in the area of Virtual appliances for office(and home) environments for secure browsing / traffic monitoring / Anti-spam / "anti-phising" with content filtering capability.
Experience Virus/Spyware/Malware trouble shooting, Windows, VMWare, Linux. With over 10 years of industry experience in the Information Security field, I would be able to offer my experience and time to solve your problem. If any solution requires more time and effort or you require a customized product, I would be able to do so for a small fee.
Organizations FA Inc.
Education/Credentials Graduate Degree in Computer Science
Expert: Dave Mitch Date: 7/5/2008 Subject: software
Question QUESTION: Seems like every few months my internet surfing becomes very slow, especially after I download something. I bring it to a repair shop and they fix it. I know little about computers or software. What software (s) do I need to best protect my computer from becoming very very slow again. I'm not sure the difference between antivirus, firewall, anti spyware etc...
ANSWER: Since your problem of Internet slowing down seems to re-occur it could apparently be due to an old system. What is the hardware configuration (as in type of processor, RAM, Hard disk capacity) of your computer ?
If you are not sure, go to Start, Run, type msinfo32. You will get a summary of the system information of your computer. You could "export" this to save a copy and have a look under-the-hood of your system, for diagnosing the problem. This could give a few clues as to why your system is frequently slowing down.
To speed up the machine you could "defrag" the hard disk (see these online references for a detailed explanation of the procedure for defragging your hard disk:)
If all this sounds complicated, you could email me a copy of your system configuration. I could do the diagnostics and try and troubleshoot online. Let me know if you need any further help.
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QUESTION: here is the info.
Item Value
OS Name Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Version 5.0.2195 Service Pack 4 Build 2195
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name USER-ON75CALIPJ
System Manufacturer Compaq
System Model Evo D510 SFF
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 2 Stepping 7 GenuineIntel ~2392 Mhz
BIOS Version 686O2 v2.14
Windows Directory C:\WINNT
Locale United States
Time Zone Eastern Daylight Time
Total Physical Memory 253,424 KB
Available Physical Memory 67,100 KB
Total Virtual Memory 876,968 KB
Available Virtual Memory 251,632 KB
Page File Space 623,544 KB
Answer Your system has 256MB of RAM. Under normal conditions a Windows system needs atleast 512 MB and above of RAM. Ideally about 2 MB would be the best.
You could consider upgrading the amount of RAM in your system.
Additionally, you could optimise your system for best performance.
Instructions for doing this are available at:
How to set performance options in Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308417
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