Hey all, this issue is frustrating the heck out of me... I have, over the last month, started to see the performance of my desktop (specs below) reduced to an unusable level (startup taking 3-4 minutes, shutdown taking 5 minutes or longer, and general program startup taking 3-4 minutes or failing completely...even small things like Performance or System Manager type stuff.) System: XP SP3, ASUS M3a32-MVP m/b with Athlon x64 dual core CPU, 4Gb RAM (I know...wasted), 512Mb ATI graphics, 500Gb HDD and a 1Tb HDD. Defence systems include Kaspersky 2010 (fully up to date) and AVG (fully up to date). The wierd thing is - when I have tried to open up explorer, waited...got bored, then tried to open up something else, still nothing...I open Task Manager. All of sudden, everything works at normal speed. System Idle processes indicate 98%...so should be ok...but the CPU graph is spiking to 75-80% for no known reason. All non-critical processes are killed off already and nothing seems to be drawing much in the way of RAM - but something seems to be thrashing the CPU. Registry is nice and clean and HDD defragged - all the normal domestic reasons for a slow down... My thoughts are: are the antivirus programmes being overly active and are interrupted by TM, could there be a CPU fault (or being a dual-core...could one be at fault - does it work like that?) or has windows update messed something up in a big way? Additionally: All the live updates have been carried out, both antivirus programmes have run through and indicate a clean system, connecting to the internet doesn't seem to make a difference one way or the other. Motherboard drivers HAVE NOT been updated yet - would this be something that would have THAT great an effect? Grateful for any help/suggestions/ideas. Ta, J1 person needs an answerI do too

Hi, You may configure your computer to clean boot and check which of the background application was taking up the CPU usage for your computer. To configure your computer to clean boot follow the link given below.How to configure Windows XP to start in a "clean boot" statehttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353 Note: After you have finished troubleshooting, follow the last step in the article to boot to normal startup. It is not advisable to have more than one anti-virus on the computer, better would be to uninstall one of them. Hope this information is helpful.Amrita MMicrosoft Answers Support EngineerVisit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

Hi Amrita, Thanks for the advice - I'll go through those steps tonight after work. A couple of other points I'd like to add after a weekend of no internet connection (phone line problem) and of tinkering with settings after reading some of the other threaded advice on here. 1) The cd/dvd writer is permanently named with whatever cd is in the drive at startup - when you change a disc, the contents are available but the name stays the same. Only way to get it to refresh is to disable the drive in the hardware config and to re-enable it. Point #2 might be relevant at this point - but if not, what could cause this? Is it a linked/attributable cause for the overall problem.2) Event viewer showed two consistent failings - one is the W32Time sync (not too worried - my router is often slow to accept and provide IP addresses which often delays the connections to servers by a few minutes,) but the second has led to an interesting discovery: Sfsync02 fails to connect to bla bla bla....and yes, upon checking with the Computer Management Util - Starforce is running (Oh no!!!!). I have been reading up this morning on the effects of this piece of protection-malware, and it sounds like my first reaction (to delete the registry entries and, when next booting up, to step-by-step it to ensure the drivers are not loaded so they can be deleted) was the correct one. What effect does Starforce have on an OS and could this be a main cause?3) Other things done/checked out: another defrag; checked the cpu and MB temperatures - all fine; stopped Kaspersky for a while (no great effect - but might have been slightly quicker through not running programme-start up checks).4) Explorer.exe had to be stopped then restarted to clear the screen of 'artifact' window's remnants...things that had closed down or were trying to open or were open (some were unresponsive - some working fine.)5) Flight Sim X (installed during my tinkering - to test what happened) loaded fine and was playable; I was interested to see if there was any noticeable difference in performance in either Main CPU or Graphics CPU loading - nothing stood out, although scenery load time caused a shudder every now and then. Before and after running it (it shut down ok) other smaller programmes still struggled to operate normally. The main issue(s) still seem to be that:a) the slow down causes problems during logon if you try to get in straight away (and 'Protected by Kaspersky' is still taking time to be displayed on the logon screen) and still occurs, but only after a few minutes, if the start-up cycle is left to complete in the background before logon. (This was why I wondered if overheating might have been a problem - which it doesn't appear to be.) Oh btw - I thought my CPU was a dual core - it isn't - it's an AMD Athlon 9500 Quad Core...so even less of an issue with processor speeds. (No overclocking has occured - ever...not been brave enough.)b) the randomness of what will cause a hang or slow-down: why does a big app like a game run ok, but a smaller system app (like Windows Explorer) take minutes to load?c) why would opening up Task Manager (still) make a huge difference in the following: - Slow-to-open apps come up almost straight away - Unresponsive apps become responsive again - HDDisk operation lights start to flicker again and all is well with the world.But close Task Manager down again - and everything starts to slow again.... Very puzzling. Anyway - I'll go home and look into the Clean Boot option tonight and report back what luck I have. Many thanks for the advice - will check back soon.JaseAS PS - I run two AV progrs bacause I have had experience at work and at home of a single programme not detecting something that the second prog discovers - therefore the second prog (AVG) is a catch-all. If there is a reason or if there are symptoms of a programme clash (or if they work in harmony) - what are they and how can I tell one way or the other? My desktop has Kaspersky 2010 and AVG (Free) whereas my netbook has AVG (Free) and Comodo Firewall.

Amrita, Clean booting hasn't changed anything. I am getting serious system hangs for no reason. I've binned AVG, run the msconfig to go for a clean boot - but even Task Manager is havinga hard time starting up. I read a bit of a cheeky comment about a possible MS update that might have caused this- whilst I don't think it would be done on purpose, could it be that a recent update has caused a bit of a problem? I am really flummoxed and feel that a re-build is not acceptable. This PC is 2 years old, the system specs are good and it is kept in good repair (hard and soft-ware wise). All goes well - but updates do seem to slow the system progressively until the inevitable re-build. Any further ideas as to what causes a system hang that clears up when (if you are able) task manager opens? Rgds, JaseAS