PC is being a bit of a dog and the internet is stupidly slow!

Flare · 17 Nov 2009 at 18:45

First off my PC spec:
Windows XP
Q6600
GTX 280
4GB XMS2 DDR2 Ram
Samsung F1 640GB HDD
BIOSTAR Tpower I45

I've been noticing recently that my PC has been pretty slow and there seems to be a few little bugs/problems with it; a common thing is when I click "My Music" or something from Start nothing happens; as of yesterday i started getting random freezes which last a few seconds and as i am typing this my Task bar just froze.
Also, my internet has been deathly slow lately to the point where it is barely usable! I'm on an 8mb line but my last internetspeedtest maxed out at 0.14mb/s

where as my parents get ~ 5.5mb/s (I just did a test on my mums laptop)

I've done the following to try and rectify the problems:
Ran scans with Norman
Ran scans with Avira AntiVir
Ran scans with Malwarebytes'
Ran scans with Superantispyware
Ran scans with Norman Malware Cleaner
Ran CCleaner
Ran a dskchk

Non of the above have had any noticible effect

Thanks in advance,

Flare

Sin_Chase · 17 Nov 2009 at 19:07

Try superantispyware

Aso, what switches did you use on the chkdsk?

/F /R ?

Flare · 17 Nov 2009 at 19:25

Sin_Chase said:
Try superantispyware

Aso, what switches did you use on the chkdsk?

/F /R ?

Thanks, i'll give that a try.
*edit* im downloading it now, it's so depressing to see that a 7mb file is going to take 7 minutes to download

i just ran chkdsk.
I just tried the commands chkdsk:/f and chkdsk:/r but for both it just came back with "The drive, the path, or the file name is not valid." :confused:

Mattus · 17 Nov 2009 at 19:43

You need chkdsk c: /f /r.

Is it possible to reinstall Windows?

Flare · 17 Nov 2009 at 20:07

Mattus said:
You need chkdsk c: /f /r.

Is it possible to reinstall Windows?

Ah right ok, thanks.
Because i have a C and a D drive should i do both?
And do you mean use "chkdsk c: /f /r" as a single command, or do them both separately?

And yeah it would be possible to reinstall windows.

Flare · 18 Nov 2009 at 18:02

I've ran both chkdsk's on both my drives and ran superantispyware, superantispyware found 35 infections and has got rid of them but my internet is still as good as useless.
Any more ideas?

UniqueID · 18 Nov 2009 at 18:47

Chkdisk is only useful if you have signs of data corruption, which not very likely to be possible here with network issues?
in xp control panel go to administrative tools and log viewer/ event veiwer, check the software /hardware faults and report back to us, soldier.

something is leaching your internet OR something is wrong with your internet line.
as you are saying you're pc is acting up i would probably bet on something leaching your internet.
You can have the most sophisticated antivirus in the world, and it would still not detect some harmful code running amok in your system depending on how it runs (for example if your antivirus does not scan memory or is just signature based then stuff can still run amok in your memory, eg. a boot.ini override)

For me it sounds like your computer has been compromised by something, and if it was me i wouldn't think twise about reloading my system from scratch but nobody likes hearing that.

see what you find in the event log, from there can see if its a system fault or not, the most importent events will be in red/yellow.

CaptainCrash · 18 Nov 2009 at 19:08

Given the steps you've already taken, it looks like the installation is hosed (to use a technical term), for whatever reason, and I think if I were you I'd be starting to consider a format/reinstall at this point.

I'm sure many people will say that formatting is unnecessary, and that a real expert would diagnose and "fix" the problem, but IMHO life's too short... just go for the nuclear option and sort it out once and for all, rather than endlessly faff around with a crippled computer and no guarantee of satisfactory results.

Once you've done that, taking an image of the system partition might not be a bad idea, so next time it happens you can be up and running again in the space a few minutes.

Flare · 18 Nov 2009 at 19:26

Thanks for the advice fellas.

UniqueID said:
in xp control panel go to administrative tools and log viewer/ event veiwer, check the software /hardware faults and report back to us, soldier.

Well looking under Application events there are a few errors and warnings but under System events there are a lot of errors and warnings! I seem to be getting a lot of errors from the source cdrom. This could explain why when i try to insert the MW2 disk to try and install nothing happens couldn't it? If so, any ideas what the problem would be?
*edit* this is the description of the cdrom error: The driver detected a controller error on \Device\CdRom0.
Also, i have just put the disc back in and it's just whirring up for a couple of seconds and then stops, it is doing this repeatedly. My optical drive sounded like it just spun the disc a hell of a lot faster than usual!

So what do you reckon; fresh install or reformat?

CaptainCrash said:
Once you've done that, taking an image of the system partition might not be a bad idea, so next time it happens you can be up and running again in the space a few minutes.

How do i do that?

*edit* One more thing, would i be safe to back up all of My Documents and put them back on when i have everything sorted?