PC Pals Forum

Technical Help & Discussion => Self Building, Upgrading & General Hardware Help => Topic started by: sharon159 on August 17, 2006, 04:14

Title: why is my computer sooo slow?
Post by: sharon159 on August 17, 2006, 04:14

Anymore my computer is running so slow, sometimes it just locks up. A window pops up syaing internet explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close.  I have defraged too. I have windows XP, appreciate any feedback on this..thanks

Title: why is my computer sooo slow?
Post by: sam on August 17, 2006, 06:15

do you have a firewall / antivirus protection installed?

Title: why is my computer sooo slow?
Post by: Simon on August 17, 2006, 11:20

Yes, sounds like spyware or something draining all your resources.  As Sam said, make sure you have a firewall running, and up to date anti-virus protection, and run Ad Aware, and Spybot which should remove any spyware from your machine.  Once your PC is clean, Spyware Blaster will help to keep you free from any further spyware infections.  All the above programs are free, and download links are below:-

Ad Aware (http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Personal-Edition/3000-8022_4-10399602.html?tag=lst-0-1)
Spybot (http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-Destroy/3000-8022_4-10401314.html?tag=lst-0-1)
Spyware Blaster (http://www.download.com/SpywareBlaster/3000-8022_4-10486084.html?tag=lst-0-1)

You must make sure that you update these programs before running them, or they will be less effective.  You should find them fairly easy to use.  If you continue to have problems after installing and running these, come back to us, and we will investigate further.

Title: another question...
Post by: sharon159 on August 19, 2006, 02:46

Simon..I did download adaware, and splyblaster, I still get the window saying  internet explorer encountered a problem and needs to close. Also..I read my hometown paper and it takes forever for it to load, otherwise when I am in my yahoo account there is not problem. Also...searching the internet is somewhat slow too. Could it just be the internet service provider...I have dialup?. And...the provider is barebones, I got it 4 yrs ago and I am still paying only $8.00 a month. Should I get another service?

Title: why is my computer sooo slow?
Post by: sam on August 19, 2006, 04:41

of course dialup will make your internet connection very slow. saying that though, it wont cause internet explorer to crash. Have you got all the latests patches to your operating system installed? I have a feeling something quite drastic is wrong with your machine. You might also find firefox, http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ as a good alternative web browser that wont crash every few minutes

Title: why is my computer sooo slow?
Post by: Simon on August 19, 2006, 11:13

Unless IE crashes on a particular website (there could be some sort of script running which screws it up), then I would agree with Sam, and speculate a deeper problem with IE or your Windows installation.  Try Firefox and see if that improves things, and of course, you must be one of a small minority still on dial up, so I would suggest shopping round for a broadband provider, which should definitely improve your connection speeds.  If things don't improve, come back to us with some details of your machine, particularly which version of Windows you are using.  If you are using a version prior to XP, you may be able to re-install Internet Explorer, which could possibly rectify things.

By the way, how much stuff did Ad Aware and Spybot find?  I assume you did allow it to delete all the rubbish?