Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[tuftedduck]

Thanks, scottiesmum.....

Your post is relevant.. .......and ATF Cleaner is a very good prog.
Another good one is CCleaner ......http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

[chrissie]

.......As to your slow and sluggish machine.
Was it like that before you made the avg-to-avast switch ?
If not, it is something to do with Avast........nothing to do with "infections" ( you do not have any infections....avast, malwarebytes and Trend housecall all give you as clean ).
I suspect it is the "Behaviour Shield" in Avast. When first installed, this part of Avast tracks and learns your every move and learns your behaviour patterns on the basis that if anything then happens that is not within your behaviour pattern...it will question it and flag it as unusual.
It would be worth turning off that part of Avast to see if that is what is slowing you down.
To do that, open Avast GUI, on the left hand side click on "real time shields" then click on "behaviour shield" and when that happens click on the stop button and then apply/ok out of that. (The systray icon will change at this point and tell you that you are unprotected...ignore that for the moment until we see if this shield is the problem. We will rectify that in a moment ) 

One other thing about the slow PC.............can you let us know how much RAM is istalled, can you also post a screeny of the "processes" tab in taskmanager (expand that window to show all processes ) .............that will show us what is running on your PC and may throw up something that is slowing you down.

Hi TD, thanks for getting back.  First off just to say that some of those files (386 in number from the search) are over 1,000Kb each....that's quite a lot to me and taking space I think but of course I'm no expert (if only I were lol).

Re slow computer.  Yes it's been slow for a long time now, a lot of times "hanging" with windows not opening properly, programs not responding and hellish job to close down with the "end now" window it takes lots of goes to close them.  Sometimes when I've only got a couple of windows open a pop up will come up to say virtual memory is running low....and will open whatever... so I know something is taking up the memory.  I will try and do a screenshot of the processes running if I can get it large enough.  There's 960Mb RAM on here as I had it increased a couple of years ago.  I think it's running a little quicker now that AVG is gone...but not that much.

Just done the screen shots but not all on screen so I've taken 2 shots so the 2nd one overlaps the first so as to get top, middle and bottom.  Hope it helps IF I've managed to upload it here lol.

Chrissie

[attachment deleted by admin]

[silversurfer44]

As you already know you have something that is taking a lot of memory. Do you have a lot of things running in the systray. Many times they can take up memory as they stay resident. Looking at your screenshots it doesn't look as though you have anything that stands out and your cpu cycles are very good. Maybe TD can advise you more as I am now running out of my knowledge of Windows. I have not worked wit it for a number of years now as a main operating system. I only use it occasionally.

[tuftedduck]

As ss44 says, there is nothing nasty going on amongst the processes.
One or two of them could be happily stopped without affecting things badly, but the saving on memory usage would be minimal.

As you had the slow/sluggish problems prior to the avg-to-avast switch, Avast is not the problem so my comments above are nonsense...


Your concern about being short of space, your wish not to lose more space and your comment about getting "virtual memory running low" rings a bell with me.
When Windows runs out of available RAM as may happen if you have one or two ram-heavy applications running, it may turn to the paging file and use that as a sort of substitute RAM

Paging file = scratch disc =virtual memory .., an area on your hard drive drive set aside for this purpose

If your hard drive is full or getting full there may not be sufficient free space available on the drive to act as paging file...so the system struggles and waits for RAM to be freed up from another source.
I am sure that I read sometime in the long distant past that Windows cannot handle this sort of situation very well if you have less than 10% of your disc space free.

Is your drive very full ?
Can you go My Computer.....right click on the C drive and then click on properties. You will see a wee pie-chart showing free space and used space......can you let us know what these figures are ?

[BritBrat]

You know I said about renaming files, well if the folder they are in is not a system folder and all seem to be related I have been known to rename a folder.

Leave it for a week or so and if any issues rename it back to what it was, if not delete the whole thing.

But to be honnest I think you should leave it alone for a while and see how it all goes.

If you were to reformat/restore it you would be amazed how fast it is again but it would not last long.

My XP (this machine) is old and slow but I still like to use over my Windows 7 machine that has a Quad core and 12 gig ram but is really fast.

[jeffbb]

Hi
Not sure are you running windows 95 ? .If so a little bit of info on virtual memory  in windows 95 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/128327

Regards Jeff

[tuftedduck]

@ jeffbb........chrissie has XP, but I think the same rules apply.

[chrissie]

Hiya
Didn't get back last night as wasn't on this pc until now.  Info required is...
Capacity 69.5 Gb     -    Used space  17.4 Gb      -  Free space   52.1 Gb

Yes XP SP3 here jeff

Also must just say re Avast... that when the PC boots up it's coming up with putting a file in the Sandbox but when I look in Sandbox I can't see the file.  The file it is dealing with each time is  C:\Program Files\iPod\bin\iPod service.exe  I read up about the Sandbox what it does but not how to find the files it puts in there....

Thanks to all for continuing help, don't know what I'd do without you nice people.

Chrissie

[silversurfer44]

Morning Chrissie, have done a search on the Ipod service.exe and all reports say the same thing. If you don't use itunes then disable this program. This would suggest it is resource hungry and is started when Windows starts. You will be able to rename the file by putting a '~' at the end of the file.

[chrissie]

Hi Colin 2

Thanks for looking that up.  You know I'm dipsy and not completely confident of renaming files (well not that type lol) nor disabling thingies, (I don't use iTunes) so would it be possible for you to give me an idiots guide to doing it please?    Yeh I know...I'm a pain in the proverbial but I'm sure you will make allowances 

[silversurfer44]

Allowances made. We all have to start somewhere. 
To rename the file do a search with the little puppy dog and search for ipod service.exe. There should only be one, if there is more then the instructions apply to them all. Right click on the file name and select 'rename' from the popup menu. In the box with the filename in just move to the end of the name and add '~' without the quote marks and the press enter. That's it. If there is more than one then do the same to the rest. Reboot and all should be OK.

[tuftedduck]

@ chrissie.

Well, you have oodles of disc space available, so that is not the problem.
TD will have to put on his thinking cap and get back to you.

Can you look at something please.
Right click on My Computer ( on the desktop) then click on properties>advanced>performance>settings>advanced>virtual memory>change and post a screeny of that page ?

As to the ipod thingy.........there is an choice here of three options depending on your wishes

1) If you don't want the program...uninstall or at least disable it as suggested by ss44. However, the program is not particularly resource hungry.......according to your taskmanager screeny it is using, when idle, only about 4.5 Mbs or RAM

2) If you want the program but do not want it to start automatically at boot up, knock it out in msconfig and it will fail to autostart as from the next boot-up ( will come back to that later. )

3) If you want the program and want it to autorun at boot-up but do not want it to be "sandboxed" open Avast GUI, on the left of that click on  "additional protection" when that opens click on "Autosandbox"  then on "settings" and when the menu opens, click on "exclusions" ....on that click on "add" and in the dialogue that opens type in Ipod services.exe and apply/ ok out of that..................Ipod will no longer be sandboxed.

msconfig.
The way to stop any program running at boot up is to use the msconfig utility............this is how to do that, and it would be helpful if you could also post a screeny of.this page.
go desktop>start button> run ..........type in "msconfig" without the quote marks and click on ok. When that opens click on the "startup" tab.
Run down the list of programs in there, and if there is an entry for iPod or iPod helper, uncheck it/them then apply/ok out of that.    After making any changes in msconfig you will, on next boot-up, get a pop-up warning telling you that something or someone has been fiddling about in system settings...click ok on that and it will go away. 

[chrissie]

Sorry bout intermittent appearances...hosp n docs appts this week so on and off here.

@ Colin2  thanks so much for that, it found 2 files I will save info and deal with at a later date.

@ TD - will attach the screenys here.  AVAST sandboxed the program file iPod services exe as I booted up so not sure it will be on the start up screenshot but you will know when you look.  Had to include 2 startup pics as couldn't get it all on.

I did think there's lots of space on here but wondered why all the "hanging" and splitting of windows and programs not responding etc...could not see the reason for it even when I had the RAM upgraded.

Thank you again for all your help.



[attachment deleted by admin]

[tuftedduck]

The answer may well lie in your first screeny, chrissie.....the virtual memory one.

Look at the figures...............recommended size of the paging file is 1438 Mbs..............but the actual size is only 288Mbs...and that is not enough.

Go a wee bit up the page to "custom size" and in there put the figure 1438 in both the minimum and the maximum boxes then click ok all the way out of that.

Does that give you better speed and performance...should do.

[HPsauce]

I'd just change it to System Managed, then click on Set.