Win XP + SP2 and AOL ?

Problem:
Neighbour runs Win XP Home, with Symantec NetSec 2004, using AOL as the ISP.
His IE homepage has NOT been changed. BUT .......

Since loading SP2 his system has gone dog slow.

Took two hours to D/L AdAware and SpyBot S+D v1.3 and run them.
Took off 60 baddies, nothing too serious, nothing that explains the slowdown.

He has a 40GB HDD, with 25 GB free, recently de-fragged, and no history of this kind of problem.

Question:
Does anyone know of any conflicts with SP2.[calm down at the back, I'm aware of one or two teething problems with the beastie] specifically the slow down part ?

Any help appreciated.

I know that the removal of SP2 would appear to be the answer, but ..........
If you reckon that removing SP2 WOULD be the answer, please could you say why ?

Ideally, the answer would be along the lines of something that he has forgotten to do.

[I know, I know, he 'forgot' to buy (insert prefered flavour of *nix here)] :D

Hmm...

On the client's computer I freshly installed XP SP2 on last night (see MyDoom thread), I ran into the same slowdown. Both Adaware and and Spybot ran really, really slow scans, and I finally gave up and let the scan run overnight. This was to uncover a whopping two malicious files.

However, my main computer on the same network is XP SP2, with both Adaware and Spybot, and it has had no such problem. Everything works great.

However, the client's computer is weaker in memory than my machine. Perhaps that's our problem?

AK:
What memory was in clients M/C ?
What was in yours ?

I cannot remember the spec for friends system .......... :DOH:

Here are a few things to keep in mind and checks to run on any XP system, not just SP2 installed, and what might solve the problem:

1. Services What's running and what doesn't need to be ran? Configure and optimize as nessessary, and you can find an excellent guide here: http://www.blackviper.com The less services running, the less RAM and cycle clocks are being used towards things you won't be using anyways. SP2 included anywhere from 4-8 new services.

2. Startup What's booting up on startup, and what doesn't need to be booted up automagically? Run msconfig to get a list of what is booting up on startup and then use google to sort through the files that you are not 100% sure about. This could be an MS Word autoloader to something like having unneeded MultiMedia game controllers loading. The less that starts up on default, the more RAM you have overall and more cycle clocks to do what you need to do.

3. Harddrive fragmentation When's the last time that HardDrive has had a chance to breath? I recommend -not- using the default windos defragmenter and using PerfectDisk ( http://www.raxco.com/products/perfectdisk2k/ ), as it is not only faster, but has a much more optimized defragmenting method meaning it works better. Defrag to keep things running in tip top shape. I know you said you already defragged, but know that defragging too often (more than once a week) can actually slow things down since windows attempts to "remember" program locations to speed up hard disk caching.

4. Internet changes in SP2 Is the default firewall running, and if so.. does she need it? The ICF will slow down packets because of it's filtering state. Also, there is a limited number of socket connections allowed with SP2 (limited to 10) so that worms have a much harder and slower time of spreading. However, a typical internet user may be using 50-1000 sockets during usage. Fix this to not only increase internet speeds from an SP2 upgrade, but also to help ease the processor load on it trying to manage packets like a nanny trying to deny 400 kids candy, when the other ten clearly get it. Read how to fix that here: http://www.antionline.com/showthread...556#post784556



Those should get you rolling, and if things are still running slow from there (which is odd, because the newer dll's are recompiled to take advantage of processor speeds) then it may be overall just low ram or hardware failing. Even though I can get XP working on 79 megs of RAM (psssah! To all the XP haters) I still recommend 256 for normal users.

OFF TOPIC:

Quote:

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Even though I can get XP working on 79 megs of RAM (psssah! To all the XP haters) I still recommend 256 for normal users.

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Psssssah! I got it running beautifully on a P2-266 with 64 megs of RAM. :D

Cheers,
cgkanchi

EDIT: I checked, it's a P2-333 NOT a 266, but still, pssssssah!

off topic: but still relevant
my computer with xp was fine but after i installed sp 2 it got faster (wierd but true) yes i donot use tyhe xp fire wall and i don't have many accounts ( only one admin) so i am quite surprised now