The other PC on my home network has become frustratingly slow. It is a P4 1.4 Ghz PC running XP service pack 2 with Norton Antivirus, only 256 RAM on a high-speed cable connection. It was running somewhat slowly, but OK, before. Then someone installed Windows Defender beta on it and it became rather useless, opening any window or application causes something like a 30 second delay before you can actually work in the app. (After loading the application, applications seem to run fine, like Word and Firefox). So they removed the Windows Defender but it is still running terribly and now Windows automatic updates download and fail when trying to install. I've checked it with Adaware and HJT this (log posted below), checked the msconfig and task manager and saw nothing unusual. Norton is still running, and the slowness persists when Norton security is temorarily turned off.

Can anyone suggest what to do at this point?

Thank you

bdude: made log an attachment

Hi there Zhevra , welcome to PCHF.



Please download Shoot The Messenger

Download and run the small (22 kbyte) "ShootTheMessenger.exe" utility. It will display the current status of your system's Messenger Service. The button near the bottom of its window will allow you to set the service to whichever state ? running or disabled ? that you desire.

If, for any reason, you should ever choose to re-enable the Windows Messenger Service, simply re-run ShootTheMessenger to do so.

Then boot youre pc in safemode (hit f8 when booting up) and fix these with hjt:

And manually delete this file and folder in bold:

C:\DOCUME~1\GREGLE~1.GRE\LOCALS~1\Temp\DELDIR0.EXE
C:\Program Files\McAfee

Then reboot and download ATF-Cleaner.

Run ATF-Cleaner:
First check "Select All" , and then remove the tick infront of "History".
Then click Empty Selected.
When you get the "Done Cleaning" message, click OK.

Then install and run RegSupremePro. It will want to make a backup of your registry , let it. Once it has finished, click on the Registry Cleaner tab, select Aggressive. When it has completed, click on Select, choose All. Click on Fix, and let it fix everything that it finds.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4256.html

Also check if youre HD needs to be defragmented.

When done , post a new hjt log please.

Thanks for the assistance!

I did all of those things mentioned in your post. It does seem like windows folders, navigating through them, opening up the Run box, and stuff like that, are opening at a normal speed, but when it comes to launching a program application (Word, firefox) can take a very long time to open (30 s - 1 min..?). Even simple things like notepad and 'run->cmd' to open the command prompt can take a fairly long time. After these programs are open, they run perfectly fine.

Here's the HJT log.

bdude: I made the log an attachment

Microsoft word just crashed the computer while trying to launch, the error report reveals:

Error report contents:

The following files will be included in this error report:

C:\DOCUME~1\GREGLE~1.GRE\LOCALS~1\Temp\WER9348.dir 00\Mini051206-01.dmp
C:\DOCUME~1\GREGLE~1.GRE\LOCALS~1\Temp\WER9348.dir 00\sysdata.xml

I located these files, I'm not sure if they are relevant, dangerous, or somehow related to Microsoft word.

Thanks again for any help

Youre HJT log is clean now.

See if this helps , first run ATF cleaner:

Please download ATF-Cleaner.

First check "Select All" , and then remove the tick infront of "History".
Then click Empty Selected.
When you get the "Done Cleaning" message, click OK.

Then go to start/run and type: sfc /scannow and press enter.
Have youre windows cd in youre drive while running it.

Then go to C:\WINDOWS\PREFETCH and empty everything in there , and reboot after that.

If that doesn't help then please do a Panda online AV scan , and an Ewido scan and post the logs when done:

http://www.pandasoftware.com/products/activescan

http://www.pchelpforum.com/118557-post2.html

Hmm, can't do Panda as the Internet Explorer app seems to have been REMOVED by someone at some point, perhaps at the same time they removed Windows Defender.

If you want you can get IE from here and install it again:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/...1/default.mspx

Or see if they have an ActiveX plugin for the browser you are using here:

http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/plugin.htm#download