Help needed with parents slow pc

Robinhood

I bought my parents a desktop from pc specialist some 3 or 4 years back. It was great when new but then became slow and eventually died. A new hard drive along with a complete re install cured this and it was back like new. However, again it has become really slow, even when just surfing the web? What do they do to it?:mad:

It has a pentium dual processor E2180, has 2Gb of RAM and is running Vista 32 bit. I have found a thread by 'closed' - How to speed up a slow or infected pc-29-04-2010 which I am just about to start working through. From this thread I thought that it might be an idea to include the below information. Don't know how to insert the picture like closed did so will do it the old fashioned way!

Physical memory MB
Total 2046
Cached 1344
Free 53

Kerpel temory MB
Total 197
Paged 155
Ponpaged 44

System
Handles 18787
Threads 833
Processes 62
Up Time 5:13:25
Page file 1176M / 4338M

Apy help would be much appreciated. I can see this being a lengthy resolve as I am not at my parents too often to try suggested fixes.
Thanks in advance for any help received.

aliEnRIK

Download MALWAREBYTES (Make sure you click 'DOWNLOAD LATEST VERSION')
http://www.filehippo.com/download_malwarebytes_anti_malware/
Open malwarebytes and goto UPDATE and click 'check for updates'. After its updated goto SCANNER and click PERFORM QUICK SCAN then click SCAN
Remove everything thats found (needs to be ticked)
Post the COMPLETE log here AFTER youve deleted everything it finds
If anything was found then do the exact same but run a FULL scan


reboot

Download HIJACK THIS (Make sure you click 'DOWNLOAD LATEST VERSION')
http://www.filehippo.com/download_hijackthis/
Click MAIN MENU then DO A SYSTEM SCAN AND SAVE A LOGFILE(Takes seconds) then post the log so we can see whats running
(do NOT do anything else with Hijack but scan and post the FULL log)
If you get a message that you cant write to the hosts file then Press the SHIFT key, and whilst holding it RIGHT CLICK and select RUN AS (admin)

closed

bear in mind that that thread is aimed primarily at xp systems with low memory, follow rik's advice, full scan with malwarebytes after updating, and post a hijackthis log.

Robinhood

Thanks alienric,
Iim having difficulty even in trying to download the suggested software. although already connected to internet it says Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage! Think I might have to leave this till I'm back next and bring my laptop with me.

closed

If you are using an ethernet lead, reboot, F8, safe mode with networking and try again.

Do other sites work, which virus scanner are they using?

Robinhood

The internet in general is very touchy, sometime connects and sometimes doesn't! They are connected using an ethernet cable. They are running Zone Alarm. They did have I think PC Tune Up which I have just noticed my dad has uninstalledt I thiink this is an ad on to Zone Alarm but am not sure.

aliEnRIK

Uninstall zonealarm and switch on windows firewall

Donnie

You can try these direct downloads, but you may end up needing a clean machine from which to prepare anyway.

Download, install, update and run a Quick Scan with Malwarebytes' AntiMalware. When complete, choose 'Remove Selected' if there is anything to remove and Reboot your computer.

After restart, open the program again and go to 'Logs'. Double click on the log produced for today and post the contents here.

Next, download, install and run the HijackThis Version 2.0.3 installer and use the Quick Start guide to enable you to produce a log for posting here too.

Donnie

aliEnRIK wrote: »

Uninstall zonealarm and switch on windows firewall

Don't try to remove Zone Alarm just yet!

The Zone Alarm Removal Tool is Here

Be you need to right click on the Tray icon to stop Vector from running first.

or you can uninstall it via Safe Mode, but you'll need other instructions. I have to go out now.

Robinhood

Thanks for the repkies. unfortunately I had to leave my parents to watch my beloved side get robbed of 3 points by Aresnal! Shouldn't really say that as anybody who hates Liverpool may now give me duff gen! I'm just hoping that people on this site are genuine people.

Anyway. I tried rebooting and doing F8 and that only seemed to ask me what drive I wanted to boot from?

From the replies above, am I right in suspecting Zone Alarm is the root of the problems?

closed

It could be numerous things, you need to rule out malware and post a hijackthis log. ZA can cause internet problems, and general slowness, not really needed in these days of routers, windows firewall, and virus scanners. Make sure windows firewall is on when removing ZA, especially if they don't have a router