Any Good Programs????

I already ran scans for MALWARE, ADWARE, VIRUSES, SPYWARE and TROJANS and nothing fixed the problem. I also have 2GB of RAM.

I VE HAD A SIMILAR PROBLEM WITH MY PC,ABOUT SLOW SHOUT DOWN,MY ADVICE FOR YOU IS TO UPDATE YOUR WINDOWS.OVER INTERNET CLICK WINDOWSUPDATE.YOUR PROBLEM WILL BE OUT.

Its a difficult task for random users to keep a system clean. always an adware or a spyware can attack you. check it with the help of latest microsoft programs or use something like spyboat.
Now comes the maintenace part of the system whcih keep your system faster. many a time such articles have appeared in Cnet itself.
Periodic virus checking, defragmentation once in a month atleast if you install and uninstall programs a number of times.
improvemnt in speed can be felt after the defragmentation.
Another thing is removing all unwanted programes from the startup list, can also help you solve the problem.
If these things improve your speed please send me a feed back

go under the RUN, and type in "msconfig", select the "startup" tab. uncheck all the programs that you don't want to run at startup. MAKE SURE YOU DON'T UNCHECK YOUR VIRUS PROTECTOR!!!!!!!!!!

but it's written in machine language. The two programs I mentioned tell you in plain English what they do, what they belong to, and you can disable or remove unwanted entries. You can't do that in msconfig.

I ran the program but I'm not sure or not if I can let it cleanup everything it found. Is it safe to do that????

Thanks John for answering my question. I'm going to do a scan right now

Running this problem did nothing to help my slow BOOTUP and SHUTDOWN problem. I really thing that my Windows XP program got damaged or corrupted somehow. Thats what happened to my Internet Explorer Browser thats why I had to start using Firefox, which is a much better program now when I run it then it was several months ago.

1. I run IEFIX.
2. I scan with tools like http://www.ewido.net/en/onlinescan/

Beyond that I need more details such as a hijackthis log and a long long story.

Bob

I use Ccleaner and it seems to be a very good program. It is the only program that I have used that makes a noticable improvement in computer speed when run every few weeks. Just be aware that it cleans all your saved screen names and passwords for websites you visit regularly. You just have to re-enter them the first time for each website after cleaning.

befor u run to cleanup nex time;;
go to the options tab - click cookies. on the left you wil see the
list of cookies it will delete.
u can tell pretty much by what is listed which ones to save.
transfer them to the 'cookies to keep' side and you wont have that
problem.
I save the ebay - yahoo - paypal and hotmail cookies so my
ie6 address dropdown stays there and username saves are still
there.
i am not sure exactly which ones to save for each of these - that
would be a trial and error session - im to lazy for that - so my
saved list has probably 3 or so for each - total 11
plus - there are a few things on the start page that probably should
be unchecked. hahaha its been so long that I set mine up I dont
remember what the initial defaults were - this is also a trial and
error.
I run mine everytime I am done with an internet session - which can
be several times a day - since it only takes a few seconds to run.
sometimes I run it during a session if i notice a slowdown - there
are a couple of spybots that slow the system VERY noticeably
2o7.net is the worst - lateley it has cut to just 2o7 .
next I go to search and find ALL the 2o7 and delete all.
it used to create a self starter on my pc. i would clean it and
zap it was back. hahaha It does not seem to show up as much lately
but I still scan the list b4 the 'run cleaner' tab.
=in the 'advanced' section I only have 'prefetch' and 'hotfix' checked
=in 'int explorer' i have recently typed urls uncheckd and autocoplete unchecked
all the rest are checked
hope that helps
ted

I don't trust this program!!!! I downloaded it, installed it and afew seconds into the scan my spyware program flagged me that I had some ADWARE and a TROJAN virus. I'm immediately removed the program and did a scan. It found and removed the ADWARE. I scanned for Trojans with my trojan program and it didn't find anything.

Gumby4,
I'm reading through these posts, because I'm having the EXACT same problem you are. Which program do I not trust?
I installed Mcafee Anti-Virus Plus and Sunbelt Personal FW, along with Counterspy, and iHateSpam.
I have StarDock XP tweaking software loaded in, like ObjectDock, IconX, Rainlendar, StickyNotes, Theme Manager, WindowsBlinds.
I've got a Toshiba Satellite M55, 1gig RAM, 80gig [14used; 66free] HD, and another 80gig external [Seagate]. As well as an older Gateway, with 256 RAm, which is networked in - with 20 gigs on that.
I've deleted iHateSpam, which ran SOOOOOO slow it took an hour to go through 1 piece of mail before I killed the process in task manager and deleted it - I hate iHateSpam.
Did you solve your problem? How?
Thanks in advance.
K

I haven't solved my problem yet!!!! the program that I don't trust is PC Security Test 2007. I strongly believe that my Windows XP has got damaged of corrupted some how.

Hi. I've come across this many times with many systems. Some viruses or malware programs are just a big time pain in the butt. Here is what I believe to be the best solution.

Invest in an external USB SATA hard drive. Something bigger than your computer hard drive. After it's formatted properly back up your entire C drive. I love open source products. If you don't know what those are, they are fully functional products that the authors offer for free. By backup app of choice is DriveImage XML by Runtime.org. The great thing about this app is you can browse through the backup data and pick and choose what you want to restore.

After backing up your PC onto the external hard drive install a fresh copy of the OS. I have my Windows disk. I use it on other PC's because the license keys are on the PC's themselves. Sometimes I've had to reactivate with Microsoft but it's all legal. Some PC's, as I had just discovered such as Dell have a hidden recovery partition on the drive. By hitting CTRL F11 during system boot it took me to the Dell recovery console and restored the PC back to the original factory settings.

After this factory setting restore or fresh OS install I restored the users profile. The user profile is found in C:>Documents and Settings. This restores the users documents, IE Favorites, Desktop items and such.

The only drawback really is you would have to reinstall all of your drivers and programs. What I've done with my PC is after a clean install, Windows and HP updates, software installs I make a DriveImage backup of the whole PC.

Believe me, this is the fastest way of fixing your PC.

Good answers and not so good ones: some of us have no solutions, it seems. STRANGE, I find that the forum is just going along with more
or less success and AT CNet are some specialissts or "experts"
who do not lift a anything to give a More Informed Answer..
where are the IT pros where is Ch Pirillo etc
Am thanking the ones who do have some solutions Some Rather Helpful.
As far as Msconfig in Run PLEASE find the Answer: it exists..

some programs as you say must stay in there etc And About aalla
athose Running Processes:::could any briight PRO (IT or Other) offer
some answer?What is the use of us or you trying to resolve when
the IT etc Pros are in/at those sites and just keep sending us
once in a while the same routine advices on Spyware oon PC maintenance
without hardly any new answer nor solution Regards to each of you
of us...
strange all those Forums....

if your asking about what you should keep running in the task manager then:
do the three-fingered-salute (Ctrl+Alt+Del) -> click on the processes tab -> under the process tab click on the "user name" tab -> under the user name section, you should see that "Owner" (or the name that the computer is enlisted under as) shows up close to the top -> the ones that say "owner", follow to the "image name" -> keep only explorer.exe and your security software -> the rest (under the owner tab) you can get rid of.

Just to let you know, I'm running on windows XP SP2, so the following will only work if your using windows XP SP2.

hope this helps.

To Shades 09: Thank you very much. It does help a lot for that part
of the running processes. Am also Running XpProSp2 on one machine, and
for other reasons running XpProEn_Sp1a on another...could explain why
I did not upgrade this one to Sp2, but space and time do not permit.
There are 2: explorer.exe and IEXPLORE.exe. this last one has a large
amount of bytes..very large amount.
The rest of problem is All the unknown or unsure processes:
I tried doing what was recommended by Site Editor or Adviser once.
But something I did wrong: the result was "you must reactivate XP"
Then the explanation popped up a little later: because you used the
Diagnostic Mode in Task Manager. This is not registry, but it is also
sensitive or risky. Would any oor all of you remember when on the
Forums the debate was about "svchost.exe" being necessary or being
a malware?
My complaint was that we try or you, out there in the forum, try and
do help each other, but WHERE are the IT pros, the Letter Editors,
the various Authors and counsellers who give information day after day
to the publiic (us), or IT pros who discuss between themselves, and
strangely insult each other often enough?
Let us keep a smile, life is too short to overworry so often!