best places to start looking

Hi dnraikes, I would definitely lean towards the hard drive coming to its end. Maybe its time for a whole new machine as well? Backup everything and replace the drive. This should fix your problems.

Well, a failing hard drive normally does not slow down (or at least not "visibly" and to the extent you describe).
Usually a hard drive either "fails" (binary, it's working/it is working NOT) abruptly or starts giving far more explicit signs (bad sectors, read or write errors, NOISE coming from it, etc., etc.).

Test the drive with the manufacturers diagnostic program, as what you report sounds a lot more like a "botched install" with a zillion services running and overbloated Registry and what not.

Check also the Event log, hard disk drive errors such as read/write errors are normally logged in there.

Just for the record, a good "generic" trick to SLOW down a too fast system 😯 is to install to it "norton security suite 2011" or, more generally anything produced by Symantec in the last, say, 8 years. wink

jaclaz

Mount the image, run a few virus scans using the free malware utilities. Check msconfig, uninstall unused apps, etc.

I had a problem with an XP laptop once. I never tracked it down. I replaced the hard drive, and did a compete clean reinstall of XP.

Suggestions I followed were possible overheating of processor due to dirt. This did not help either. I swapped over the memory modules. What ever I did it always remained slow. I bought a new one.

A failing drive will cause the system to hang at times - typically the MFT area of a drive has most problems, and it could fail fatally today.

A 6 year PC is due for replacement - get your data off and start again with a Win 7 (64) system. Then play with the old PC.

I had a problem with an XP laptop once. I never tracked it down. I replaced the hard drive, and did a compete clean reinstall of XP.

Suggestions I followed were possible overheating of processor due to dirt. This did not help either. I swapped over the memory modules. What ever I did it always remained slow. I bought a new one.

A failing drive will cause the system to hang at times - typically the MFT area of a drive has most problems, and it could fail fatally today.

A 6 year PC is due for replacement - get your data off and start again with a Win 7 (64) system. Then play with the old PC.

Hmmm.
With all due respect ) , it sounds a lot like

I once had a problem with my car, it couldn't reach anymore 200 Km/h, I changed wheels and tires, and nothing, then I replaced the air filter, and still nothing, finally I changed the oil and it's filter, and still nothing, so I bought a new car.
A 6 year car is due to replacement, get your personal belongings from it and move them to your new Porsche 911.

While this is of course very good advice for someone with UNlimited financial resources, it could be not so for everyone, and just for your interest wink , I actually did buy for twopence the car that couldn't make it to 200 Km/h and after having cleaned the carburetor and replaced the spark plugs, it now makes 215 km/h.
(and yes, I am cheap)

jaclaz

Hi all,

Thanks for the quick feedback. I will grab some of the free malware utilities and check msconfig, look at the registry and see what could be cleaned up there.

I also have pctools registry mechanic running on this system, and it can report high health one day and without running or doing anything the next morning it reports low health, so I just think the thing is messed up somewhow

This is actually my wife's computer and I think she would resist the idea of moving to windows7 (oh wait that is me, as a blind programmer/forensics examiner wannabe, windows7 is not as accessible as I would like, although I am going to have to go there over the next month whether I want it or not).

What hardware and RAM is in the box?

Might just be it is short on RAM. Over the year bloatware tends to accumulate on PCs, and eventually you get to the point where you are swapping out RAM to disk even for basic operations.

Other possibilities are bad device drivers. Or the disk putting itself back into PIO mode instead of being in DMA mode.

Other possibility is the CPU overheading, often do to dust accumulation, and putting itself into low power mode (underclocking itself). Check the temperature and open up the case and check for dust.

Generally it is a waste of time playing around with the registry. There are 100,000s of keys in the registry. Deleting a few isn't going to make any difference at all.

I would suggest doing some forensic investigation to determine the root cause -)

I also have pctools registry mechanic running on this system, and it can report high health one day and without running or doing anything the next morning it reports low health, so I just think the thing is messed up somewhow

IMHO it is another app "messed since the day it was written" (and adding bloat and slowing down the machine.

Make a backup of the Registry with ERUNT (to be on the safe side)
http//www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/
Get regseeker and run it (over and over) to clean the Registry
http//www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm
Get CCleaner
http//www.piriform.com/CCLEANER
and run it.
Get rid of Norton Security Suite and replace it with a smaller, leaner software.
Check with AUTORUNS
http//technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902
*anything* that autostarts, most of the time it is UNneeded and only hogs up the machine, commonly the Nokia PC suite, the graphic card "control panel" and a few unneedingly autostarting "Office related" apps can put a non-recent machine down to it's knees.
Check the services you are UNneedingly running in the background, verify that you actually *need* all of them.

jaclaz

i've had new laptops (64 bit Win 7) delivered recently running Norton 2011 which have suffered from the same symptons (not to the extent of a 4 minute startup -but certainly v slow) best advice I can give is to remove Norton 2011 and install Microsoft Security Essentials.