slow boot up and running

[Bill Q]

I have just re updated to XP pro to get rid of my crackling sound. This has worked ok and I have activated it via the phone, all seemed ok. It was ok for a couple of days but now out of the blue the pc is taking ages to boot up and when finally in to xp it is running like a dog. There is nothing obvious on the task manager. The only thing I did was to turn off auto update as it seemed to be running all the time. I have since turned it back on . Any ideas ???

[catgate]

Have you been infected with a Christmas "nasty"?

Do you have any good anti-malware stuff ?

[Dencandy]

I suggest in this order: 1 - check for over heating hard disk & faulty fans (search on the Internet for HDD Health, download & run it following their instructions. 2 - Deep scan with your anti-virus programme. 3 - Deep scan with your anti-malware programme (like Spybot Search & Destroy). 4 - Check your hard drive for faulty sectors by running Check Disk (My Computer> Right click on partition that has Windows on it [usually C:]>Properties>Tools>Error-checking). 5 - Run the De-fragmanter. After each stage shut down and re-start & see if there's any improvement.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Also, run an online scan for malware using http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

• Do you have XP SP2?
  
• Do you have an active firewall?
  
• Do you have anti-virus software installed?
  
• Do you use anti-spyware applications?
  

Once we have made sure that no malware is involved, and that your computer is secure (as well as checking for hardware problems, as per Dencandy's post above), we can go and look for ways to improve your computer's performance.

[Bill Q]

Thanks for the suggestions, I shall do all that has been suggested. This will take a little time. So in the meantime have a happy christmas. I shall update on how I got on.

Thanks.

[Bill Q]

I have used cclear and startup manager and this has speeded things up a lot, its back to normal now. however the sound is still crackly

I have uninstalled real player and am playing music on nero now. This seems to be a bit better but crackel is still there at begining of playing but goes after about 1 minute. It crackles if I do any mouse clicks on anything else, Eg. looking at mail.

Thanks for you help, any ideas on the sound problem would be appreciated.

[Dencandy]

Happy to read you've had some improvement Bill Q. Sorry I don't know anything about the sound problem. Maybe others can help....