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General discussion

Windows Moves Slowly After Upgrading To XP Pro From Home Edition

Mar 14, 2004 1:06PM PST

I just recently upgraded from XP Home Edition to XP Pro, and have noticed that my computer has been moving quite a bit slower than it was. Applications seem to be taking up more of the cpu than they used to, which is probably what is causing the drop in speed. There are no programs running now that were not running before the upgrade (including services). I am using Norton Antivirus 2004, so I don't believe that it is a virus. If anyone has any ideas about what would be causing this, or how to fix it, it would be a huge help. Thank you very much.

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Re:Windows Moves Slowly After Upgrading To XP Pro From Home Edition
Mar 14, 2004 1:26PM PST

I have had experience with a friend who had the same problem you are not perhaps running a brand name computer are you? and if so, they all have a backup partition that looks on windows like another hard drive or perhaps running a dell? anyways there is no other possible way that i have ever seen that xp pro runs slower than xp home not even on it's worst day of course that is just me. BUT most likely you need to run a program called powerquest partition magic or another program before installing win xp and just completely delete the backup partition or if you could run a format on that partition which i don't think actually will work but yo want the hd you are running on to appear as one hard drive to windows and not two unless of course you are running two or more hard drives. What seems to happen is the manufacturers backup partition seems to try to install itself onto win xp pro and it just doesn't work and also you get all of the bs programs that you don't want starting on installing themselves from that backup partition I don't understand how it works but what i can tell you is you need to make it go away.

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Re:Windows Moves Slowly After Upgrading To XP Pro From Home Edition
Mar 14, 2004 1:44PM PST

NAV is good, but the stand alone anti virus does not catch everything-it does not reconize some worms or 'horses' as things which harm your machine. You will have to purchase other Symantec Products to do the job or download free from the web.

Did you get all the critical patches, including SP1, right after the upgrade ? If not, you may have some very unwelcomed guests.

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Re:Re:Windows Moves Slowly After Upgrading To XP Pro From Home Edition
Mar 14, 2004 3:29PM PST

Hey Pal If your just using Antivirus to protect your self on the web think again. I guess your computer might have been infected of spyware or even a trojan. try to download zonealarm or sygate for a firewall or spysweeper or Spybot S&D for anti-spyware. Another thing norton antivirus is a memory eater it take a lot of it to work. download Avast antivirus its free and your computer might run better.

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Re:Windows Moves Slowly After Upgrading To XP Pro From Home Edition
Mar 14, 2004 8:33PM PST

I know that Norton Antivirus is a memory hog, but it is not what is slowing the system down, as I had it installed before I upgraded. As well, it is not the only tool I use to protect my computer. I also use the newest version of Black Ice for my firewall, and have spybot search and destroy, as well as adaware installed that I use regularily. I can guarantee that there is no spyware or adware on my computer, and as for viruses, I highly doubt it because the speed decreased the second the upgrade finished, and I was not even connected to the internet during the upgrade. There is also no backup partition on my machine. I currently own Partition Magic 8. Thanks for the suggestions though. Any more ideas?

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Re:Re:Windows Moves Slowly After Upgrading To XP Pro From Home Edition
Mar 14, 2004 10:41PM PST

The article [Q811493] explains that you may experience slower computer performance after you install the 811493 (MS03-013) security update package on a computer that is running WinXP Service Pack 1 (SP1), or after you upgrade to SP1 on a Windows XP-based computer on which the 811493 security update was previously installed, and that the patch can be removed if installed. This problem may be more likely to occur if you use some features of some third-party programs such as antivirus programs. For example, this problem may occur if your antivirus program is configured to scan all files when you open (or you run) them. This is sometimes called "real-time" scanning.

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Re:Windows Moves Slowly After Upgrading To XP Pro From Home Edition
Mar 14, 2004 11:23PM PST

1. "Computer Speed and Performance May Decrease (Q3104119)."

2. The article [Q812337] explains that a Hewlett-Packard (HP) Pavilion computer may run very slowly after installing the HP software update for the Universal Serial Bus (USB) multimedia keyboard, and you may also notice the CPU is running at 100%, with the Kbd.exe file taking up over 90% of the resources.

3. File transfers and printing done by means of infrared data association (IrDA) may be slow and a print job may time out and stop printing, or it may take an extremely long time to complete, [Q823979].

4. The article [Q810063] explains the situation that when using a USB keyboard and mouse connected to a USB 2.0 Controller, they are slow to respond after a hibernation event.

5. Please read through the thread group here, "Virus? or Worm? W32Beagle J@mm."

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Re:Windows Moves Slowly After Upgrading To XP Pro From Home Edition
Mar 15, 2004 1:14PM PST

Thanks for the help, but none of it worked. Maybe it is just one of those things that require a full reformat. I've done that a couple of times already this year, so I might just live with the problem. I've noticed however that it is the slowest when loading windows, ie, processes like svchost take up a lot of the cpu during the first minute or so that windows is loading, as well as explorer.exe. As well, a process simply called "System" takes up a lot of resources at times. I do not have a bunch of processes and services running, and I know what each of them are. It even takes longer to get from "dos" (whatever that black screen during load up is called now) to windows (desktop). Any final ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again all.