Woe is Me, When Whoa Is My PC

By Wayne Maruna

            “My computer is running slower than molasses in January!”

            Of all the calls I get for computer assistance, this is one of the most frequently heard complaints.  The other most common concerns I hear about involve malware infested machines and dead or dying hard drives.  Requests for aid in establishing wireless networks pretty much round out the top of the list.

            Computers that have seemingly dropped down into a lower gear can be difficult to diagnose.  While I would never put computer repair on a level with the work of the medical profession, I can appreciate how doctors can be presented with patients with seemingly identical symptoms, yet upon further examination they find the underlying causes to be totally different.

            When confronted with a slow machine, the first thing I do is check the basic hardware configuration.  What speed is the processor?  How much random access memory (RAM) is installed?  Is it adequate for the operating system that is running the machine?  Is there any issue with available hard drive space?  If nothing else, this helps me gauge my expectations for what should be considered fast or slow, those being relative terms.  I get a sense for what the owner was accustomed to before the machine state became altered.

            Since we can’t talk to the ‘patient’, we talk to the owner.  Was the change progressive, getting worse over time?  Was it abrupt?  Can it be linked to any particular event or program application installation?

            With that background, I start nosing into the contents of the hard drive.  Is there an anti-virus application installed on the machine?  Is it up to date?  Are there any other anti-malware programs installed, something to block or snoop out spyware or adware or hijackers or rogues?  Are they used with any regularity?

Generally I next make a bee-line for the system registry, which is the central repository Windows uses to pretty much control the behavior of all the software installed on the machine.  You, dear reader, unless you are experienced and well versed in the nuances of the registry, would be well-served to follow this advice:  Keep your cotton picking hands out of the Registry.  If nothing else, you could insure that the machine will not run again without a complete reinstallation of the operating system. 

            There are sections in the registry which control what programs start up when the machine is powered up, or ‘booted’ (and haven’t we all wanted to really ‘boot’ our machines at one time or another.)  I’ve gotten pretty good at sniffing out irregular entries in these registry sections.  Some of them can point to malware infestations.  Others are benign but are really unnecessary and use up precious resources.  I’ve seen a kernelfaultcheck entry in a couple of registries bring their respective machines to their knees, whereas I’ve seen the same entry have no apparent effect on other machines.

            My next stop is often to run full scans with installed anti-malware applications, or if necessary I install my own favorites and run them.  Each tends to find things the other misses.  Malware is a frequent, though not certain, contributor to a slow machine.

            Never install two anti-virus programs on the same machine.  Like giving a four-year-old a can of paint and a brush, there are certain things in life you should not do, and this is one of them. They will contend with each other and you will end up the loser.  If you change A/V programs, be sure to remove the first completely before installing the second.  Note that this is not the same thing as having one A/V and another anti-spyware program.  Those can co-exist.  Multiple anti-spyware programs also generally co-exist without issue.

Choose your anti-virus program carefully.  I have seen a couple of Embarq customers whose machines had the Embarq security suites (a product of a reputable company called  F-Secure) installed, and they ran slower than, well, molasses.  When I removed the Embarq software, it was like unbuckling a horse from a buckboard wagon.  Zoom!  Yet other machines run fine with the Embarq security suite, so go figure.  Regular readers will know that I have no love for the Norton/Symantec line of security offerings.  Generally when I remove the Norton product and install something less resource intensive in its place, the machine exhibits a visible gain in speed.  As I have said before though, word has it that Norton has fixed their resource issues with their 2009 product, but I cannot attest to that.

I’ve seen machines that were slowed down by their use of an early version of “Microsoft Update” as opposed to the more common “Windows Update” to obtain software patches.  Changing back to Windows Update completely changed the performance of the machines.  Other machines used Microsoft Update without issue.  Don’t ask me why.

The point of all this is to say that each machine is different.  There is no one pat answer, no magic bullet that will speed up a slow machine. Sorry about that.  But the good news is that these slow machines can be remedied, to varying degrees perhaps, but each can be improved.  And while anti-malware remedies may be employed, antibiotics are not needed.