[SOLVED] Sluggish PC

Not so much a real problem as an irritation: despite being clean
according to various anti-malware progs, my own PC has recently become
just a bit sluggish responding to mouse and k/b input. When I start to
move the mouse the pointer often takes a second or two to catch up.
It's an Athlon XP 2600+ cpu with 1GB ram, only about half of which is
normally in use. OS is XP Home, fully up to date.

It runs BOINC climateprediction in the background, but suspending that
seems to make no difference. And, it's being running that for ages but
I've only noticed this behaviour recently. With BOINC suspended cpu is
mostly 2-4% with a spike of 80-100% every 30 secs. TaskInfo2003
categorises the spike as System activity, and also tells me there are
"Too Many Win32 Handles", at about 25k. I have flaky broadband (long
phone line) so the internet connection goes up and down quite a lot
and I first noticed this sluggishness while the connection was being
lost or re-established, but it seems to happen almost anytime now.

This is somewhat galling as I've elimated viruses, trojans and adware
from many other machines, but can't seem to fix my own. Could it be
something else? Win32 handles?
--
mind, matter, meaning and information at http://www.mmmi.org

In message <>, Robin Faichney
<> writes
>Not so much a real problem as an irritation: despite being clean
>according to various anti-malware progs, my own PC has recently become
>just a bit sluggish responding to mouse and k/b input. When I start to
>move the mouse the pointer often takes a second or two to catch up.
>It's an Athlon XP 2600+ cpu with 1GB ram, only about half of which is
>normally in use. OS is XP Home, fully up to date.
>
>It runs BOINC climateprediction in the background, but suspending that
>seems to make no difference. And, it's being running that for ages but
>I've only noticed this behaviour recently. With BOINC suspended cpu is
>mostly 2-4% with a spike of 80-100% every 30 secs. TaskInfo2003
>categorises the spike as System activity, and also tells me there are
>"Too Many Win32 Handles", at about 25k. I have flaky broadband (long
>phone line) so the internet connection goes up and down quite a lot
>and I first noticed this sluggishness while the connection was being
>lost or re-established, but it seems to happen almost anytime now.
>
>This is somewhat galling as I've elimated viruses, trojans and adware
>from many other machines, but can't seem to fix my own. Could it be
>something else? Win32 handles?

I bet all those virus checkers, software firewalls and Windows patches
to patches are to blame. Have you installed and uninstalled lots of
software lately?

--
Jeremy Boden

On Thu, 24 Nov 2005 12:31:16 +0000, Jeremy Boden
<> wrote:

>I bet all those virus checkers, software firewalls and Windows patches
>to patches are to blame. Have you installed and uninstalled lots of
>software lately?

Not especially recently, but in general, yes. Are you thinking that
the registry needs cleaning, or the hdd defragmenting, or...?

--
mind, matter, meaning and information at http://www.mmmi.org

In message <>, Robin Faichney
<> writes
>On Thu, 24 Nov 2005 12:31:16 +0000, Jeremy Boden
><> wrote:
>
>>I bet all those virus checkers, software firewalls and Windows patches
>>to patches are to blame. Have you installed and uninstalled lots of
>>software lately?
>
>Not especially recently, but in general, yes. Are you thinking that
>the registry needs cleaning, or the hdd defragmenting, or...?
>
With Windows you could do all those things, but a catastrophic failure
which forces you to reload Windows and all applications will give you
the most benefit (and the most heartache).

--
Jeremy Boden