My pc has been sluggish for quite a while. I have tried the advice given on this site with respect to spyware removal, but I "appear" to be clean. [Ad aware, spybot, and I have PC tools Antivirus, Spyware Doctor & Reg Mechanic]. Shutting down has always been a problem in that it usually just hangs there and waits for me to hit the power off button after "Saving your settings" yawns through it's final tasks. Start up has slowed to several (~5) minutes.
I thought that perhaps an increase in RAM might help (as everyone says "you can't have too much") so I increased from 1Gb to 3Gb, no initial noticeable difference. Yesterday I downloaded all the M'soft security updates and was requested to reactivate Windows which I did over the net. I updated the chipset drivers, the video drivers (radeon) and the sound drivers (Creative audigy). The sound drivers was the last thing I did and I think that prior to starting this part of the update process the pc speed had improved somewhat. Anyway, now when I start up the pc freezes at the start up screen or if it gets through that, at the logon screen. I can get into safe mode but not sure what to do. If I go back via restore do I lose all the driver updates?
All advice appreciated,
Thanks,
Chris

System Restore will remove the updates that have been placed subsequent to the restore point chosen.

I would run a diagnostic on your hard drive and consider a Repair Install of XP if the drive is OK.

The manufacturer will have a downloadable diagnostic on their web site which will create a boot disk.

jephree,
Thanks for the reply. I will try your suggestion later when I'm back at home.
I went into safe mode yesterday and started up via last known working config. This allowed me to start up and I found that the sound card was not working. I went back to Creative's site and redownloaded the latest driver for the Audigy Plat 2 ( as I had done previously). The problem with freezing on start up returned so I expect there is a clash with the new driver. I'll also contact Creative support and see if they can advise.
Rgds,
Chris

I run Windows Xp Home, celeron cpu 1.70GHz and I only have 224MB ram on this system. Windows runs faster now than when I installed it 4 years ago, I did do a little tweaking, but nothing like overclocking the system.

I timed how long it takes windows to shutdown 24 seconds and startup was 31 seconds(when desktop appeared)

The only applications I have in my startup are anti-virus and spyware these are the only programs that run when Windows boots.

Any services that I don't need or use are disabled, most run on manual when Windows starts them when needed.

Clean the registry using RegScrub and RegSeeker even though I use both these programs every 6 months I manually edit the registry and get rid of all the junk the installers don't remove.

Delete browsing history, run search *.tmp,*.chk,~*.* delete all these files, clean out prefetch and delete everything in the recycle bin and remove any programs not used in the last 3 months..

Updates I make sure all my programs are up to date and I have the latest definitions specially anti-virus, spyware, windows update, plus I use the online scanners usually once a month.

The last thing I do to keep Windows running good, I defrag every 3 days, if I use the computer a lot I defrag that night, I wrote a batch file in note pad and just click open which brings up C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe defrag runs and disappears off the screen when finished.

Winnipeg,
Thanks for the the good advice, which I'll take heed of once I get a stable system running. I often run Clean Up which does some of the cleaning you describe. The problem for me is that out of about every 10 attempts to logon I can get in maybe once so I need to maximise whatever diagnostics I can do (& I'm not very know-how anyway). It seems that the Windows downloads I thought I had installed in fact did not install (I've read a similar problem on the Windows newsgroup site) so I'm trying to get that sorted as a 1st step. When I have to restart the pc for the changes to take effect I'm back to square one. It's advice I need on what I can resolve in SAFE mode for me to move fwd I think. I've tried to disable what I think may be possible conflicts in msconfig start up but problem still there. I restored back to 3 days ago before I started my "upgrade drivers" mission. Still freezes. I tried plonking the recovery disk in the cd drive and restart but the pc didn't see it. I ran PCTools Reg Mechanic and though it found loads of faults it didn't resolve the start up conflict. I suspect the problem may now be the ATI Radeon driver update as I have read elsewhere that Radeon has caused conflicts. I'm combing whatever sites I can find to get more advice but have to wait till I get home to try them out. Also I think it's great if you can edit the reg but I read warning signs everywhere & suspect that I may make matters worse. Don't know if this helps but the Windows logo is very faint on the "Windows is starting up" screen ?? Most times the mouse pointer just freezes but sometimes the pointer remains active, just no further progress.
In jephree's reply he mentioned a "repair install of XP", I'm not sure how to do that !
Thanks & keep the advice coming.
Rgds,
Chris

Hi christos;

You couldn't be in better hands, jephree lives and breaths computers, he has provided a link for installing xp, I don't think he has the time to post many tutorials with all the questions people ask him.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

When did all these problems start when you updated all these drivers, I went to a site on the internet where they scan your machine and check for outdated drivers, I had same drivers as you that I should update, so I went to the manufacture website for my machine and sure enough their were updates for the same ones you installed, I even had one to update my BIOS, I posted a message in the drivers forum and jephree answered the post. He advised me Not to download these updates he said""If it ain't broken; don't fix it". When I read your first post it sounds like you have been having trouble for some time, is that when you decided to update the drivers. The reason I didn't go ahead and update all those drivers for my machine Windows runs like a bat out of he** and I think if I do download them I'm going to start having problems with Windows... drivers as you know can produce many different errors, I don't know how long you have had this problem for, but if you had I Gb of ram that should be more than enough to run Windows Xp, as stated in my previous post I only have 224MB and I have no problems downloading webcasts, podcasts, movies, files, or anything from the internet.

The windows update issue you described in you post may be related to this problem, this link might help you resolve the update issue.

http://forums.microsoft.com/Genuine/...7991&SiteID=25

I think somewhere I read in one of your posts you tried to restore your system using system restore. Have you tried using the last known good configuration.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307852

The recovery disk you are using, is this the one that came with the computer and do you have the update Sp2 on your machine.

Hello Winnipeg,
Thanks for the continued support and your helpful comments. I appreciate that you guys are so busy and therefore cannot give individual tutorials and there is lots of info around on the site to bring the likes of me up to speed on some of the basics.
I have tried both restore and good config and have been editing the start up in msconfig to try to determine which driver may be the guilty one (if indeed that’s the case).
I finally managed to get all the latest windows updates downloaded and the genuine windows OS validated. I also rec’d email from Creative support to advise on driver download, will try later. I’ve been checking the event log and printing it out (piece of cake for you guys but a giant step for mankind for me) to determine what actually happens when the pc freezes. Example :-

Event Type: Information
Event Source: W32Time
Event Category: None
Event ID: 35
Date: 21/03/2007
Time: 22:39:46
User: N/A
Computer: CHRIS-9WU1YXCZG
Description:
The time service is now synchronizing the system time with the time source time.windows.com (ntp.m|0x1|81.178.105.17:123->207.46.130.100:123).

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp

While this may not be the cause of the freeze it was the last thing to happen. I am looking at what MS services I can now disable too. While these are little steps for me it does mean I can chip away at the minor probs in performance until I can home in on the main issue. I’ll also look at what redundant progs I can remove. I’m also logging what actually happens, and how long it takes to boot up.
Yes I’m SP2’d and the recovery disk is the one provided by the comp manufacturer. I accept the point about “don’t fix what ain’t broke” but other advice I see says better performance comes with the latest drivers and as you’re aware the performance of my machine doesn’t match yours. (Also, too late now, I’ve already done it !!)
I’ll check your links out later, thanks for these too. I left my pc with AVG spyware running so hopefully it’s still going when I get back later.
I’ll let you know
Rgds,
Chris
Ps Do you live anywhere near Neil Young? If so tell him I was asking after him !!

If you were to reinstall XP, wouldnt that mean everyhting u had before will be gone? the computer will be like how it was when u first got it?

Hi Chris;

You must have the box checked automatically synchronize with an Internet time server in date and time properties because that event is just telling you that Windows contacted the time server, it does this every 7 days if that box is checked. This event is not an error it just informs the user Windows time has updated, I wish I would get this event 35 in my logs only I get the bad one which is event id: 36 which means Windows time is out of sync. and I don't know why, I do know that as soon as Windows Defender finishes scanning my computer(auto set 1am) it kills Windows time. I think it has something to do with Windows phoning home Windows Defender contacts Microsofts server to download the latest definitions, but when this happens somehow it kills Windows time and I have to reset the time.

Have you tried running scan disk, you say computer freezes(Most times the mouse pointer just freezes but sometimes the pointer remains active, just no further progress. Does just the mouse freeze up or does this happen during startup, shutdown or running an application because freeze problems can also be caused by errors in the FAT or NTFS file system, I would run scan disk which in Xp is called check disk you can do this by going to My Computer and then right-click the local disk you want to check (usually, this is drive C). Click Properties, and then click Tools. Under Error-checking, click Check Now.... Make sure both check boxes are selected, then click start because Check Disk needs exclusive access to some Windows files, it will display a dialog box asking you whether you'd like to run Check Disk the next time you restart your PC. Click Yes. When you reboot windows check disk will start to run, just to be on the safe side open system restore and create a restore point, if you want(I do this all the time) delete all the old restore points unless you need them. If check disk finds a bad sector or other corruption on your hard disk, Check Disk might not be able to recover certain files as it attempts to fix the problem, I do this every week and never had a problem better to be safe than sorry, right.

Do you know if the recovery disk came with Sp2 installed or the disk only has service pack one on it, you said in one of your post that you were going to use that disk to install Windows again. When windows crashed 3 years ago I had Sp2 already installed on my hard drive but the recovery disk that came with the computer only had Sp1 on the disk, so when I reinstalled Windows(put recovery disk in CD-Rom) recovery disk would not work which made the problem worse. When Sp2 first came out and was available through Windows Update when I installed the update it caused all kinds of problems on my computer it took me 3 months to get Windows to run right.

If you have a screen saver running I would turn it off their nice to look at, but are real resource hogs, I let windows choose - run box type: sysdm.cpl
when system properties opens click the advanced tab, click on the settings button in performance and in performance options put a check - let windows choose what's best for my computer.

This link should help with selecting which services you need running.

http://www.jasonn.com/turning_off_un..._on_windows_xp

Sorry, I don't know Neil Young does he live in my city?

Originally Posted by Winnipeg

Sorry, I don't know Neil Young does he live in my city?

...the elderly ...like a Hurricane!

I am just a dreamer, but you are just a dream

http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/


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