XP Home Oddity

My machine was having booting issues (sometimes would / sometimes wouldn't) and had twice turned itself off on me in the middle of a Photoshop session. Took it in and discovered that the fan on the video card had failed and it was causing an overheat. Ok, fine... Swap out card from a 512Mb ATI to a 1Gb nVidia 9500GT. In the meantime, my computer shop proceeds to tell me that Norton Internet Security sux and that I may have some nasties running around causing a slowdown as well so I ask them to give it a good sweep.

So, I get the box back home and have been having fits trying to get it running and keep it running with most of the issues appearing to occur in Internet Exploiter 8. So here's what I've discovered:

- Open Task Manager and look at the list of processes (44 at boot .. I'm told this is about right for a desktop)
- Performance is bouncing between 0 and 5% (Dual Core Intel)
- Double click IE and it adds TWO instances of IE in the list of processes.
- Close IE and those two instances stay in the list!
- Double click IE again and it adds two more!
- Close it, they stay .. wash, rinse, repeat adding two more instances of IE each time. Eventually, the computer hangs.

I'm also noticing that at times, one core is running 100% busy and the other is doing nothing with NO programs running! The computer is 50% tied up with nothing going on.

I have a sneaking susupicion that in cleaning out any nastiness, something got pranged and it's going to call for either a re-install of Windows (XP Home) or else we're going to have to nuke the C: drive and start from scratch (which I really don't want to do...)

Anyone ever see anything like this? Is there a known cure?

TIA and Happy Thanksgiving to those participating on Thursday...

Just echoing my comment to you for others to see. Hopefully you can get this fixed soon!

Download CCleaner and Malwarebytes to clean up any issues.

Mines never actually crashed, but it does run painfully slowly sometimes. Most often after I've left in on but unattended for a period. What I think is happening is it chooses to do "housework" and then refuses to drop it when I ask it to perform a specific task.

The housework can vary, from downloading updates to simple backing up.

I think its wrong of Microsoft not to make the PC tell the user what is happening behind the scenes and allow us to decide whether its important enough.

If you have the xp home disk available, a good place to start would be to run System File Checker
Click start>Run , type cmd and hit enter , in the command box type ...

'sfc /scannow' without the quotes

let it run and if it asks for the disk insert it and continue, this process checks the integrety of of all the OS files and replaces corrupt and missing ones.

Also disable any start up programs you don't need starting with Windows, not directly linked to your problem but helps ease resources on the PC, to get there.... Start>run> type msconfig and hit enter, click the start up tab and uncheck any un-needed applications,Reboot after.

You can still run them by going to all programs , but you run them when you want to not when the app thinks it should., worst culptits for me are MSN,Skype, even Abobe likes lot of things in start up.

The processes in task manager....... iexplore.exe is IE, explorer.exe is the Windows interface, ( desktop, taskbar.etc)

If I could add a little more..

In folder options there is an option to have programs and folder open with a single click, could this be enabled?
Its quite possible the reason for 2 instances of IE is the double clicking your doing,my quick launch icon on my taskbar open with one click but desktop need a double click.

Does IE open up or just show in the processes list?

And +10 for these programs...

*Jayrou wrote in post #11339933
If I could add a little more..

In folder options there is an option to have programs and folder open with a single click, could this be enabled?
Its quite possible the reason for 2 instances of IE is the double clicking your doing,my quick launch icon on my taskbar open with one click but desktop need a double click.

Does IE open up or just show in the processes list?

And +10 for these programs...

- I'll check the double click issue but why is one instance only 15-16K and the other is 60-80K in size?

- IE does open and run (and runs fine the first use) but subsequent uses (or adding tabs) adds instances in the Process List until the computer just hangs.

Roughly how long should the CMD task you mentioned above take? Does Windows rip through that pretty quickly or is there a lot of "Blink - Wait - Blink - Wait" ?

ETA: Single Click Open is NOT enabled so far as I can tell...

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #11339972
- I'll check the double click issue but why is one instance only 15-16K and the other is 60-80K in size?

- IE does open and run (and runs fine the first use) but subsequent uses (or adding tabs) adds instances in the Process List until the computer just hangs.

Roughly how long should the CMD task you mentioned above take? Does Windows rip through that pretty quickly or is there a lot of "Blink - Wait - Blink - Wait" ?

ETA: Single Click Open is NOT enabled so far as I can tell...

The SFC task will run quite slow in a blink wait kinda way

I didn't realise IE added instances for each tab** Edit: OK, this is a new thing with IE 8 so every tab runs with its own process and I suppose each process will take what memory it needs at that time, to be honest I dumped IE for Firefox years ago.... have you tried it?

This solves the multiple processes,but doesnt help the with the freezing up

*Jayrou wrote in post #11340035
The SFC task will run quite slow in a blink wait kinda way

I didn't realise IE added instances for each tab** Edit: OK, this is a new thing with IE 8 so every tab runs with its own process and I suppose each process will take what memory it needs at that time, to be honest I dumped IE for Firefox years ago.... have you tried it?

This solves the multiple processes,but doesnt help the with the freezing up

I decided to try the low-tech approach and remove / reinstall IE8 first. If it's no joy, then we'll try Firefox.

Beyond that, it may be time to ask Santa for a G5...

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #11340118
I decided to try the low-tech approach and remove / reinstall IE8 first. If it's no joy, then we'll try Firefox.

Beyond that, it may be time to ask Santa for a G5...

If you get the drivers for your new Video card you could try a system restore to before your card broke and IE was fine, this would undo any thing the shop done to it and remove any programs you installed, but any personal data would be safe.

If all went OK you could reinstall the video card drivers and be back to where you were before all this.

Firefox is great, it really is....you should try it.

My boss at work switched to Apple after 25 years with Windows,DOS and he loves it, he'd have our network go Apple if I let him.

Ok, so back after re-installing IE8 and no change...

Still seeing double instances in the Process List with one at a manageable size and one at nearly 10X the size in terms of memory used.

Yeah the multiple processes are a trait of IE8

Try running IE without addons

first close IE, in Task manager make sure there are no iexplore.exe processes running, if the is, right click and choose end process

then go to start>all programs?>accessories>system tools, there should be a IE8 (without addon) there.

not want to try the system restore?

Joining you now from Firefox...

I decided not to try the System Restore simply because I think I'm too far down the road from "last known good" to bother.

So far, with Firefox, I'm not seeing anything like the performance hit I was getting with IE. And, there's only one Firefox in the Process List so that's a bonus right there!

Great, now you've get some of the cool add ons for it
one I really recommend is Tab Mix Plus

https://addons.mozilla​.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1122/

gives much more control over your tabs

There's thousands of great add ons, Coolris is a good one for viewing photos

https://addons.mozilla​.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5579/

Nearly in the words of Apple....'There's an add on for everything'...

https://addons.mozilla​.org/en-US/firefox/

Jay, there may still be some malware running around in your system. google, download, and run COMBOFIX.EXE to make sure there are no buggies still hiding somewhere.

Jay, what was the result of running CCleaner and Malwarebytes? Or did you?