Why is my machine slowing down?

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Leo,

Yes, but I've always had a problem knowing what exactly in the task manager should and what should not be running. I'm always afraid I'm going to hard shut down something that should be running. Is there a list of bare minimum tasks that should be running on XP?

Unfortunately, not to my knowledge. The biggest problem, of course, is that "minimum set" will vary based on your configuration. The best advice I can give is to use the info in task manager, process explorer and from this article: http://ask-leo.com/archives/000029.html to attempt to identify what each particular executing task is, and decide based on that whether or not it's "safe" to turn off. Oh, and I have yet to reference it in an article here, but http://ask-leo.com/r-xpservices is a good reference to what many of the Windows XP services are and whether or not you might need 'em.

Leo

What if explorer.exe is the process eating up 99% of the power? Shutting it down kills the interface...

Yikes. Does it auto-restart (it should), and if so is it back to taking 99%? If you're running XP, I'd run the system file checker to see if something got damaged somehow. I'd also run a spyware detector ... a quick look suggests that certain types of spyware can cause this. Recommendations for spyware scanners are here: http://pugetsoundsoftware.com/recommend.html
under security.

Good luck!

Leo

Actually the problem when explorer is eating ram and taking 99% of cpu is a windows bug, and occours when you right click files, microsoft has no solution and recommends that you left click all files in explorer before rightclicking them.

Thanks for that info NIRee. I tracked down the knowledgebase article: http://ask-leo.com/d-40420a - it does actually have a couple of work-arounds.

Thanks,

Leo

Computer keeps slowing down but not due to processor or memory being used up. Ran spyware and virus checker, defragged. Just seems to get stuck for about 5mins and then is alright again. Any help appreciated.

I'd use task manager or sysinternals process explorer (http://ask-leo.com/d-31017a ) and look at what processes are running, perhaps who's hogging the CPU, during that 5 minute period.

I had a similar problem, in that every program I tried to execute ended up with the infamous hour-glass icon.Even the task manager went nuts. In the meantime the disc was crunching away --a lot of disc activity. I finally concluded that Norton Anti-Virus 2003 was the most likely culprit--so
I uninstalled Norton and things settled down a bit. Something is still not quite right, though.

Any one else care to comment??

Hello Leo,

Thanks for your comments. My system slowdown problem was solved a bit by the defrag idea. However it did not last long. Whenever I try opening vlc or windows media player, it shows up occupying 99% of CPU cycles, which fluctuate between 70 and 90 and video is jittery. When not using them the system is still slow. All the memory and CPU usage shown on the process tab are within bounds, still the system is slow.
Initialli I tried to uninstall SP2 which I thought resulted in this problem. I however formatted and re-installed windows XP, the problem exists.
Is it due to some motherboard problem. Any help will be highy appreciated.

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