AboutSaleem Expertise Computer Hardware Engineer with 5+ years of on-site and on-call experience in computer hardware mostly with Hardware and OS related issues.
Experience Familiar with Windows 9x, NT4, 2K & XP and good experience in troubleshooting hardware and OS issues.
I'm not sure if any of my scenario goes to your expertise, but any suggestions to fix ANY of the below problems are appreciated!
When my computer is "acting up" and it becomes very slow to execute commands, such as if I click on a drop down box, it can literally take 5 seconds or more for the box to even appear on my screen instead of near instantaneously as it should. Or if I type a word, the letters will not show up immediately, it will take a second to several seconds for the words to show up that I already typed. Or, I try and scroll down the page and it reacts very slow and stilted. Or, if I hit the shift key and the space bar at the same time, it does not always scroll back up the page like its supposed to. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't!
Its as if the computer is still processing something else, and this activity is in queue to be done later. Is it possible that my computer is downloading an internet update or some such in the background? Seems possible, but also seems not likely the answer as these freeze ups happen too many times lately. I just had a problem today where I rebooted my computer and my desktop icons were all very large, and low resolution. So I checked on that and it said the settings were 640 X 480 and resolution was set at Lowest 4 bit color quality. I did not make these changes, it automatically did so by itself. So I rebooted several times, but that did nothing. I then changed the Hardware Acceleration setting from its maximum, and dropped it off by one notch. At least now the resolution is correct and the icons are as they were, but the response to scrolling, or when opening a new window is slow, slow slow. Also, when I had this problem with the 4 bit color quality - when I first turned the computer on and noticed the problem, I had a message of "Windows has found new hardware, the Installation Wizard is ready to install new hardware". Well, I didn't add any new hardware! I had this type of message before and it went away after I rebooted, thus why I rebooted three times here, but without success. So, I decided to let it install the mystery hardware it found (which it then said it could not locate after searching for it for several minutes). The hardware it said it was trying to install was PCI Simple Communications Controller. No idea what that is, or where it is located, but that's what it told me was newly found and that needed to be installed.
Other problems/symptoms: I will open a new window and that window will take a long time to appear. I can see the contents of the page, but a small part of it hangs up and does not load fully and I get a message of "waiting for.. or transferring data from... (anyway, itseems to be the ads that are the problem with the slow loading as they are always the last to get completed). Or, it will open the window - but the box that should show up on the very bottom of my screen (ie below all tool bars) - never shows up. But, later when I close out all my other windows - then that window will suddenly show up and so will the box showing what page that is! Its as if it was layered underneath something and can't show up until the top layers (ie the already open windows) are closed. This is weird as I have already had in excess of 30 windows open at one time and they will just run onto a new area, not be "hidden underneath" like that (ie I will get a up/down bar at the far right of my screen to allow me to toggle back and forth between all the pages I have open since not all of the boxes can fit on my screen at one time).
So, pages "hang up" and take a long time to load. I am wondering if maybe it is related to the damn pop ups and ads that near every page tries to foist upon you? I say this because in the progress report of what has loaded already (at the very bottom left of the page) it often says something like "waiting for ad.doubleclick.net or the like. I often see an ad or pop up waiting to be loaded while the page is hanging up. The "progress bar" that is in the lower right hand corner of a page that tells you how much of the page has loaded - it has green bars in it and they will get to the very end and just stay there and the page doesn't fully load.
Related to this, when a page does load, it often takes a bit longer to be fully functional. What I mean by this is I will hit reply to an email message in Internet explorer on Hotmail. The reply section will show up, but, if I want to hit ctrl A to highlight everything and then delete it, it will not immediately be able to delete all. I have to wait longer for the page to "fully load" and become fully functional before I can do such things it was not like this before.
I find that at times I will click on the icon to open a new brower window (not sure if it happens in all three [I use Mozilla, IE 6 and Firefox], but I see it happen with mozilla for sure - when I click the icon to open a new page, the window will be launched, BUT - the tab that should show up on the lower task bar (to show what pages are currently open) that tab does not show up. It seems to get hidden and not appear. But, if I click the minimize tab for all other currently open windows, eventually the hidden window does show up. Seems that when a window gets hidden like this (ie the tab never shows up) this is when my computer slows down and things practically lock up, it is so slow. I will run about 5-8 windows open at a time, between the three browsers. I have run this way since I got the computer, and have often had close to 30 windows open at a time and not had this type of problem, so it is not due to the number of windows open as it ran fine like that before.
Thinking it may be a bug, a control change or some such, I used the "Go Back" feature to reset my computer to a time prior to when I first noticed the problem, but hat has not helped. Maybe I did not go back far enough? Not sure what all information or settings I lose when I "go back" like that.
Seems maybe I am having aproblem with my script settings or running a script? Tonight I went to the microsoft page for the instreuctions on how to use the "Go Back" feature and I got this message:
"A script on this page is causing Mozilla to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer to become unresponsive. Do you want to abort the script?"
So - is there a way to check my scripts and see if any settings are messed up, or if they are not working correctly?
When my computer does get slow/hung up, I can hit ctrl alt delete and the window that pops up shows CPU usage at 100% and the Commit Charge is often something like this 459M/1246M (not sure if that refers to memory usage or what it is?) I was about to add 512 more RAM to my system, but if its gonna go dead on me, no sense wasting the money. Would that help, or be a waste of funds?
I am also noticing that it seems like cookies are not being utilized correctly, even though I set parameters for "allow all cookies from this site" And, even on pages that used to work just fine with no loading problems.
The scroll feature does not always work on pages at all times. Sometimes it will work, sometimes not. ie hit the ctrl key and space bar at same time, it should scroll back up the page, or hit the space bar and it scrolls down. Some pages/sometimes this works, other time it doesn't.
Sometimes my cursor will slowly begin to move by itself, either after I have just got done moving it and have stopped moving it, or after a new page loads. It will slowly move to the left and upwards at the same time. Always this direction. Sometimes only goes a short bit and stops, other times will go all the ways to the very top left corner of the page I am on
My system specs: Athlon amd64 939 3000, 512 DDR memory, 80GB SEAGATE 7200 RPM U150 hard drive( 28.1 GB available). This computer was built April 2005. The Device Manager shows all devices to be in good running order. Windows XP Home, with Service Pack 2 installed. Have done windows updates on all items with the exception of IE 7. I am still running IE 6. Windows updates done since August:
Office 2003 Office 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3) Wednesday, November 21, 2007 Automatic Updates
Office 2003 Office 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3) Friday, November 16, 2007 Microsoft Update
Windows XP Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Tool (KB892130) Friday, November 16, 2007 Microsoft Update
Windows XP Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Tool (KB892130) Friday, November 16, 2007 Microsoft Update
Windows XP Security Update for Windows XP (KB943460) Tuesday, November 13, 2007 Automatic Updates
Office 2003 Update for Outlook Junk Email Filter 2003 (KB943552) Tuesday, November 13, 2007 Automatic Updates
Windows XP Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - November 2007 (KB890830) Tuesday, November 13, 2007 Automatic Updates
Windows XP Security Update for Windows XP (KB933729) Tuesday, November 06, 2007 Automatic Updates
Windows XP Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 6 for Windows XP (KB939653) Tuesday, November 06, 2007 Automatic Updates
Windows XP Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - October 2007 (KB890830) Tuesday, November 06, 2007 Automatic Updates
Windows XP Security Update for Outlook Express for Windows XP (KB941202) Tuesday, November 06, 2007 Automatic Updates
Office 2003 Update for Outlook Junk Email Filter 2003 (KB942571) Tuesday, November 06, 2007 Automatic Updates
Windows XP Security Update for Microsoft XML Core Services 4.0 Service Pack 2 (KB936181) Monday, October 01, 2007 Automatic Updates
Office 2003 Update for Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter (KB936677) Tuesday, September 18, 2007 Automatic Updates
Windows XP Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - September 2007 (KB890830) Wednesday, September 12, 2007 Automatic Updates
Windows XP Update for Windows XP (KB933360) Tuesday, August 28, 2007 Automatic Updates
Windows XP Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Tool (KB892130) Wednesday, August 22, 2007 Microsoft Update
Office 2003 Security Update for Excel 2003 (KB940602) Wednesday, August 15, 2007 Automatic Updates
Office 2003 Update for Outlook Junk Email Filter 2003 (KB936643) Wednesday, August 15, 2007 Automatic Updates
Windows XP Security Update for Windows XP (KB936021) Wednesday, August 15, 2007 Automatic Updates
If it matters any, my "write debugging information" is set up for a small memory dump. Memory usage is set for best performance of Programs and not Cache. I have changed the paging file size to 1000 MB as the initial size from the recommended 768 (in order to see if it made a difference)
I notice now that when I go to Windows Update and try for a "custom Download" the damn thing doesn't tell me what it is about to download, so it is no longer custom, as it just wants to shove down my throat what it says I need! Not sure if that's just the way Windows Update is now, or if that is a scenario just on my computer.
I do notice on occasion that my computer speakers will emit a clicking noise of sorts. Sounds like a geiger counter. In particular this occurs when I use my cell phone near it, but there are times when I get that noise occurring when I am not on my cell phone so it seems there may be an outside source of interference nearby?
I have defragged and run disk cleanup multiple times. I have emptied the cache, cleared cookies and history on all browsers. I have scanned for viruses using AVG free software and also TrendMicro free online scan and all come up clean. I have also scanned with Panda free online and they always have a few things listed that the others didn't show, but then again, they then ask you for $13 to "clean up" the "problems" they "found", so I don't know that they really found anything of note or not!! I always run my antivirus and firewall (Zone Alarm) at all times.
I am not running a lot of miscellaneous programs in the background as I have typed in msconfig and go to the start up menu and deleted all unneccessary programs (only about 4 items total are clicked for my start up), so this should nt be a problem far as I can see. I also routinely dust the inside of my computer with compressed air to keep it clean about once every two months.
Answer Dear Phil,
Thank you for giving such a detailed explanation which surely helped me in understanding the issue you are facing.
However I would like to say that you system is infected with VIRUS. Even though you have run "FREE" online scan and they have not detected any I would still say its infected and I am suspecting its a worm or a trojan. I would request you to start the system in Safe mode and check how it behaves and also let me know how many icons you see in the lower right corner of your screen (Next to clock).
To reboot your system in safe mode you will have to keep hitting F8 immediately after you turn on the system and from the options you will have select Safe mode and hit enter key and hit enter again to select the OS.
