Best Method... 6

[NickCat11]

Hello All,

Question for everyone. What's the most used way you all clean up a computer thats running really slow. I'm talking like 10 minutes to boot up and then an eternity to try and run anything. Usually when this is the case I backup everything and reinstall the OS. Is this what you guys do or do you grind it and try to fix the cpu without reformatting? Thanks

Nick

 

[Davetoo]

I look at it from a time perspective...I can reload an OS, from scratch, in about two hours (while doing other things). It may take me two days to troubleshoot a system, get it working a bit better, only to end up reformatting and reinstalling the OS anyway.

Now with imaging and the like, I can have a new system in a matter of minutes.

I'm Certifiable, not cert-ified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.

 

[xit]

A properly maintained computer should never arrive to this condition, if your security software is up to date and ran on a frequent basis and your disk is maintained, this state should never happen. Sounds like your system in question needs some serious attention. It is fine to reformat and reinstall, but the wasted time it takes would be better spent avoiding this sort of problem. I personally try to clean up the installation, thus saving important data, unless the situation is too serious.

xit

 

[edfair]

In my case it depends on whether the cleanup requires full time attention or can run independently with only periodic hands on.
I've had to sit through issues trying to save a customer's data on site and it isn't fun.


Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[vacunita]

xit makes an excellent point.

I have a PC that's running the same Windows XP installation for about 4 years now. I haven't had single problem with the installation slowing down or causing errors. Heck the Video Card died and the installation is still fine., I just bought a new one, booted windows, and installed the drivers and everything is still fine.

A well maintained PC should never reach that point.

anyway, depending on what's causing the slow down .i.e virus, malware, driver issue etc.. I might try to fix it, by just booting into safe mode check if everything runs o.k there then its most likely an issue with something that's running at startup. like an application or malware. So I disable everything from msconfig, and boot up normally. if the problem goes away it means something that is starting up is the culprit, I then enable one thing at a time until I get the behavior again. Then I know what to fix. This usually takes about 1 hour. I also run antiviri, and anti-malware tools, to make sure everything is clean. if after that it still a no go, then yes A re-install is the next step.

But again, a well maintained Pc should never reach that state. Yo should have caught the slow down well before that point and been able to do something about it.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[goombawaho]

I'd use AUTORUNS to find what starts when the PC boots - it's more thorough than MSCONFIG and you can really see what and where things are starting from.

 

[PRPhx]

Here is what you will need to do: (And YES it will take some time and some ppl will say not everything is neccessarry, but it's what I do to keep my pc running well).

1) Uninstall any and all programs/applications you don't use. Get rid of them. Delete any folders the unisntall prgoram leaves behind.

2) Do a defrag. As slow as your pc is, it WILL take time.

3) Run Chkdsk c: /R from the command prompt(Start->Run->cmd and press Enter), type Y, exit the command prompt, and reboot. Again this will take some time.

4)AFTER the reboot, you should see some performance increase. Now, google for adaware. Down load it, install and run it.

5) Google, download and install ccleaner. Run it. It will clean both your hardrive and system registry. This will take some time, but will do a fair job of cleaning out crap you don't need.

6) Again do a chkdsk c: as in #3 above.

7) After you've reboot from #6, do another defrag.

You should now have a noticeable performance increase. It takes a lot less time than rebuilding your OS and re-installing your apps, etc..

ALSO, BEFORE YOU BEGIN THE ABOVE PROCEDURE BACK UP ANY AND ALL IMPORTANT DATA, FILES, APPLICATIONS YOU DO NOT WASNT TO LOSE OR CAN NOT REPLACE.

The only time I rebuild an OS is when my pc is acting really strange and nothing else works, whether this is my home pc or a work pc. In fact I just rebuilt a work pc, as an application that relies on a scanner was almost always dieing when a user tried to select a scanner. The pc was orginally built from an image. Uninstalling both the app and the scanner failed to fix the problem. Now the scanner (*I BELIEVE*) is working properly again.

 

[NickCat11]

Thanks for all the replies. I was just curious to what people do the most under a severe case. It's not my personal computer. I fix them on the side and usually 1 out every 4 there is a pretty bad case where a reinstall is necessary. Does anyone recommend an imaging program I can use on multiple computers without a license conflict? Thanks

Nick

 

[Glenn9999]

Question for everyone. What's the most used way you all clean up a computer thats running really slow. I'm talking like 10 minutes to boot up and then an eternity to try and run anything. Usually when this is the case I backup everything and reinstall the OS. Is this what you guys do or do you grind it and try to fix the cpu without reformatting? Thanks

Usually I try what I can think of that would be really quick. The problem with such a situation is that there can be numerous explanations, and especially if there's customer data involved it can be problematic. What I tend to do is:

1) Run Process Explorer and HiJackThis and see if anything particularly suspicious jumps out and either kill the process or disable it.

2) If something suspicious-looking is there, I tend to start running the anti-virus/anti-spyware. The problem here becomes that there are so many and all don't pick up everything (they really should be sharing their samples/finds), that you could be running these for hours and not get to the answer.

Meanwhile, you could have a backup, reformat, and reinstall done and out of the way. If a customer is paying for your time, they tend to not want you to linger and try to learn on their systems (especially if it's a home call).

3) If there's nothing outwardly suspicious, the others mentioned the rest of the options (CHKDSK /R) and the like. Also, I like to look into disabling the load upon start up of what they are running to see if an errant application is to blame.

Of course, there's always the option of picking one of each (AV and AS) and see what they come across (problem again is whether it's hiding in a rootkit). Of course, if you come across something like that, there's always the chance that they corrupted the OS files, which means you're reformatting and reloading anyway.

Of course, the problem is the customer doesn't necessarily have all the disks to do the reformat/reload, either. Then you're pretty much stuck with trying to figure out the problem, if you can (good luck, especially with how non-transparent Microsoft has made their OS, and all the other applications out there as well).

Troubleshooting and fixing computers really is a complete mess these days.