Re: Compaq Presario go slow.

On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 14:28:39 +0000, Chris Whelan
<cawhelan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Geoff Mills wrote:

My son's Compaq Presario SR1109UK computer running XP came home with
some heavy malware infestation. Big boot recovery disk efforts to even
get it to the desktop, where it moved glacially. First off I ran a
boot CD antivirus check and removed 140 infections.

In Windows I used several AV utilities and Spybot Search and Destroy
many times over to try to get rid of the nasties. SSD kept finding
'Virtumonde' each time I ran it. Removal appeared to work after 4 goes
but then there was no Safe Mode, XP Defragmenter or CheckDisk working.
sfc /scannow wouldn't work either, so I downloaded SP3 and installed
it to replace missing or damaged files. Still no disk checking or
defrag available.

I downloaded 'MalwareBytes Malware Remover' and ran it. It found 7
instances of 'Vundo' on the system drive and removed them. Safe Mode,
CheckDisk and Defrag function was restored.

In Windows all is still going very slow, with some odd events like
windows closing without being prompted to. Could it be that now SP3 is
installed, the existing 248MB of memory is even more inadequate?

Not in my experience; SP2 raised the bar as far as memory requirements.
512MB makes for a much faster machine, and I would regard that as a minimum
for SP2. However, SP3 contains very little in the way of new functionality,
and won't of itself make the machine slower.

That's interesting and useful to know for the future.

Even boot CD utilities are still running unusually slowly. Might this
indicate memory lack, since XP and SP3 are out of the picture when I'm
running the boot CDs?

Boot CDs will always run slowly by their very nature. Unless you are sure
that the performance is worse than on a similar spec machine, but with more
memory, I would disregard it.

The performance is far worse on this machine than any other I've
worked on regardless of the memory size. If it's not the memory that's
the bottleneck maybe it's the HD. I'll do a disk check.

I've spent 15 hours on it so far and don't want to reinstall WinXP
afresh for numerous reasons. Any suggestions please?

Pretty much a straw-clutching exercise, but have you considered running a
reg cleaner such as Ccleaner? I have found it to help on machines that have
been much used but not maintained.

Ccleaner has been used twice, even the first time it removed an
unusually small amount of files. 4.7MB.

Sorry to add to your misery, but as others have said, the only sensible
option at this point really is a reinstall.

Chris

I think perhaps it's about time to make re-install the default option.
Otherwise a lot of time can be wasted. Many of the current malware
items are just too destructive.
--
Kind regards,
Geoff Mills
.