computer starts to lag after about an hour of downloading

[shackaholic]

Just lately my computer has started to lag after about an hour or so of downloading/uploading on ftp or p2p programs, causing to be nearly non-respondant. I use Charter pipeline cable, btw.

Could this be my NIC card? I don't have a lot of technical knowledge of computers, so I'm not sure myself.

My computer is old, and is somewhat low on RAM, but I would assume that lack of RAM wouldn't make this problem pop-up all of a sudden.

My specs for my ancient computer:
Windows 98SE
166 MHz Pentium MMX
96 Megs of Ram ( I know, I need more)
HP Pavilion 3260

[mjc]

Could be cache files...i would start by clearing out any conceivable cache i could find. Also I wouldn't discount the possibility of some kind of transfer limit, either time or size.

If it happened all of a sudden and has continued for more than a couple of days I would also be thinking configuration change...

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[shackaholic]

Thanks for the reply, but how do I clear out my cache files?

What do you mean by a configuration change? I can fit a little bit stronger cpu in my cpu socket (166 to 266, I believe).

Any suggestions? And thanks again.

[borgdrone1of2]

hello
reboot when the system starts to hag this will clear out the cache files.
have a nice day

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resistance is invigorateing lol

[shackaholic]

Now, I realized that it stops responding every hour or so randomly. It happens even when I'm not downloading and uploading. A reboot only fixes it till the next time it happens, like in an hour or so. Would a cpu upgrade fix this? Also, I checked for viruses at that housecall webpage, and no viruses came up, so it's most likely not that.

Thanks for the responses,
Mike

[mjc]

Ok, if it is happening about every hour whether or not you are downloading you may have a "memory" leak, try diasabling as many background apps as possible...

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[shackaholic]

First off, mjc, thanks a million for your help.

One thing I did since my last post, was to uninstall and then reinstall my zone alarm. Also, I found out that it was outdated, so I went to the current version. Relating to that, every once in a while, my computer had problems shutting down. When that happened, I'd pull a ctrl-alt-del, and see minilog in the dialog box. So maybe zone alarm had something to do with it. I'll just have to wait and see.

Secondly, I was reading some past posts, and in the "how to shutdown background processes" I followed a link that shows the proper startup files to realize that I did have an instance of spyware on my computer. I had webhancer on my computer. That probably wasn't the problem, but it sure didn't help.

One other thing in my startup files is "OPQFile ->C:\Windows\regedit.exe /s C:\Windows\system\rad23758.tmp" Since I'm not sure what that is, I left it. Should I delete it too?

So far no lack of response from the computer, but I guess I'll have to wait and see.

[mjc]

[/s|-s]
When a filename is specified on the command line, this switch is used to suppress any informational dialog boxes that would normally be displayed. This is useful when the Setup program for an application wants to execute REGEDIT.EXE with a .REG file, but does not want the user to be confused by any dialog boxes that are displayed.




I would say follow it to that file and find out what that file is...you probably don't want it running everytime you start.

A good program to hunt down and remove spyware is AdAware (http://www.lsfileserv.com/)

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[Paleo Pete]

Google can't find that filename, and I can't get the msconfig page to open right now so I can't check it.

I agree with mjc, track that file down and see if you can find out what it is, I consider it highly suspect if Google knows nothing about it, Google can usually find almost any filename listed somewhere...The only thing I can think of is it might be a filename randomly generated by a program installation or javascript.

Check the size of your Temporary Internet Files, open IE and go to Tools\Internet Options and click the Settings button in the TIF section. Giving it a larger temp file may help, but probably will not cure the problem. While running IE you can go to the same location and click the Delete Files button and it will empty the TIF folder. That may hep postpone the lockup problem if it is related to the TIF files.

I would also check the registry and system.ini to see if anything is running at start up that someone doesn't want you to know about. If you have Java enabled you could have any of a number of not-so-friendly programs installed and never know about it. I've run across over a dozen websites that tried to install viruses or trojans on my machine when I had everything set to prompt, or Norton would suddenly pop up...never would have known if I had left it at default settings, almost anything can be installed behind your back.

HKEY_LOCAL MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version

is the registry section to look in, look at the Run and Run Once keys, then the Run- and Run Once- keys. Look for anything out of the ordinary, especially anything pointing to the filename you posted, delete it. Anything besides that filename, let us know before deleting it so we can try to look it up.

Any trojans installed probably have a registry key set in one of those locations. Check spelling closely, some trojans replace explorer.exe with explore.exe and others that are similar, but might not be noticed. If you see explore.exe rather than explorer.exe, it's definitely a trojan, probably either sub seven or back orifice. (I think those are the two that use that filename, but may be wrong.)

System.ini sometimes also has entries, look in the top section for a shell= line. It should be explorer.exe, not explore.exe.

I don't think it sounds a lot like a trojan, more likely some sort of spyware that is hogging resources. Better to check it out and be sure though...

BACK UP THE REGISTRY FIRST.

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If your nose runs and your feet smell...
You're built upside down!
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[shackaholic]

Well, the lock-up problem is over. It stopped happening after I reinstalled zone alarm and removed a few things from the startup tab in msconfig.exe. I've been uploading since early last night w/o a hitch and no lock-up.

I'm sure that I have atleast some type of other malware on my computer though. I get alot of pop-ups. Although, most of the pop-ups do occur when I use hotmail, which I'm told is crap in that regard. And some of them, when they come up, take a while and will sit on the tool bar at the bottom of the screen. One of them every once in a while will say "Microsoft Internet Explorerer" relating to what Paleo Pete said.

I didn't find anything on the c:\windows\system\rad23758.tmp file, and it didn't come up in any of the registry values except somewhere in the microsoft messenger files. So I guess that one is o.k. But I could very easily be wrong, obviously.

A while back, I was at a webpage which did do something to my registry, allthough I'm not sure what, except for the fact that it stopped my home page from being able to be reset. A pop-up window came up in some other language. I tried to ctrl-alt-del it, but it still did it's damage. It set the home page to "cpworld.com", so I switched that in the registry to something I'd rather have it at.

In the HKEY_LOCAL MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version part of the registry, I changed Internet Explorer SearchURL from cpworld.com to another web page. Then in HKEY_LOCAL MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version -> Internet Explorer -> Main, I changed Search Bar, Search Page, and Start Page from cpworld.com to a preferrable startup page.

Then in HKEY_LOCAL MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version -> Internet Explorer -> Search, there is Customize Search and Search Assistant which were both set to cpworld.com. Once again, I changed that too.

One last thing that looks odd is that in HKEY_LOCAL MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version -> Internet Explorer -> TypedURLs there are five url settings (url1, url2, url3, and so on) they are all set to adult web pages. Could I delete them with no harm, or enter another setting?

BTW, system.ini checked out fine. Also, I did notice in HKEY_LOCAL MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version -> International that there is a Iexplore.exe, or maybe it's lexplore.exe, setting in addition to explorer.exe and rundll32.exe. Is there something odd about the lexplore.exe?

[shackaholic]

All problems solved. My home page can be reset, and the lack of response is a thing of the past.

The "OPQFile ->C:\Windows\regedit.exe /s C:\Windows\system\rad23758.tmp in my startup tab was a result of www.mycpworld.com (http://www.mycpworld.com) and browser hijacking. An interesting article explaining it can be found here:
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/printable/article/0,aid,84464,00.asp

The article also gives an easy removal guide.

Also, the adaware software referred to me by mjc, did wonders for my computer. I found all sorts of suspicious things, that once removed, seemed to make my computer work much more smoothly.

Thanks for all the valuable input...No wonder this is one of the best sites on the net.