Sudden random slow-down

I have a Dell Inspiron 600M w/ XP purchased three(?) years ago. About six or seven months ago I started getting problems with random fits of extremely slow processing. By this I mean I might be browsing the internet, watching a movie, playing a video game, even browsing my computer, then, out of nowhere, and not related to any specific instance, my comp comes to a snail crawl: the movie gets freakishly and uselessly choppy; my internet browser will not dl any page within two or three minutes; opening any new window, be it through my computer, internet explorer, etc. becomes a daunting task, taking usually minutes to complete; and my video game becomes so choppy that I cannot play it. This is not to say all those programs are running at once; normally I have no more than two programs running (currently IE and Winamp 2.1, audio) at a time, and never combine a movie file with my video games (usually Zsnes, tetris attack, sometimes CivII). Right now everything is working fine, but I usually can't get through 5 minutes of tetris attack or around ten minutes (this can vary greatly) on windows media player. The only program that seems to work fine is Winamp when I play audio only. Usually, though, the slowdown lasts around 10 - 20 minutes, then I'm back up and running. Rebooting DOES NOT affect this. My internet connection is fine. My pagefiling is by all means normal, and doesn't increase during these random fits of slow-down, however my CPU usage sky-rockets from 1-6% all the way to 100% and sits there until it feels like coming back down again. I don't have any viruses or malware or worms/trojans/ad-ware/spyware etc.; I've looked into this and it simply cannot be the case.

Why the random fits of slow-down? Is there anything I can do about it? The problem is completely debillitating, and I'd like to use my computer for more than ten minutes at a time before it becomes effectively useless.

You're certain nothing is running that shouldn't be? Have you ran hijack this?

When its getting pegged, if you open Task Manager, what does the resources show on the CPU and memory? Are there any big tasks running?

Well, just what did you install 6 months ago? Maybe some desktop search software from MS or Google? Just a WAG here, but in spite of how these programs are only supposed to use slack time for indexing your drive, I see quite a few installations where this isn't the case.

Did you install a version of MS Office that uses the Findfast utility to index your drive? Any software that looks for web updates, etc.? Even if you follow 3finger's excellent advice and look at processes running in Task Manager, it isn't always apparent which application may have installed the process. Try opening MS Config and looking at the Startup Group for any autoupdaters that may be running (Kodak EasyShare update is a common offender). If nothing looks obvious, disable the entire group, reboot, and re-enable the Startup items one at a time (followed by a reboot) until you either identify the problem or eliminate the entire group.

I ran HJT about a month ago. I fixed all the problems using forums like this that were related to that problem (which began months after the slow-down, and was unrelated).

The only AutoUpdate I have running is Norton, but I can tell when that runs (gears start cranking, fan speeds up, NAUPDATE under Task Manager skyrockets in pagefiling usage; this happens about once ever two weeks), and I did all my Norton dling and otherwise updating years ago. The only updates I do now are virus description updates, and they're set automatic, and usually only last a minute or two. The fits I'm referring to usually put my comp out of service for about 20-60 minutes.

Even though you don't address the point, we'll just assume you don't have Google Desktop Search or similar installed. You need to try the troubleshooting procedure using MSConfig and see what happens.

If things are still flaky after this, you are pretty much left with the probability that your system isn't as clean as you think it is. HijackThis is a really useful tool, but it isn't meant to detect and fix every variety of malware you can have on your machine. It really needs to used in conjunction with other tools like Ad Aware, Spybot Search and Destroy, etc. Even NAV 2007 really doesn't do so well with Spyware/Adware threats. And before you say this just isn't possible, people who tell me the same thing every day generate 15-20% of my revenue.

Let's recap here. You need to take a look at what runs at startup and try to match the items with the CPU intensive processes you see running when the system is slow. You can try running a search for the processes file (including hidden and system files) and look at their location or properties to get an idea where they came from. You can try using Task Manager to kill them and see what happens. You can troubleshoot your Startup Group.

Right now, I lean toward malware infection. If you'll take the time to detail your past experience with it and what tools you've used beyond HijackThis, maybe we can eliminate this as a possiblility.

I did, in fact, get a virus VERY recently, well after the slow-down fits started happening. I fully up-dated and ran the following programs:
Norton Antivirus
Ewido Mal-Ware control
Ad Aware
SpyBot
Smitfraudfix
I looked on-line to see what virus it was, and Ewido, Smitfraud, and Spybot all detected that exact piece of mal-ware, and effectively removed it. When I scanned again on reboot, none of these programs detected the virus. Unless the mal-ware (whose name I cannot remember) caused serious unreparable hardware damage, I consider it not related to the problem of random fits of slow-down, especially also due to the fact that these problems were happening long before said mal-ware was dled. This is the only infection I have ever inherited.

According to MSConfig, this is what I have running at startup:
ctfmon ---> system32 location; don't want to tamper w/
msmsgs ---> claims to affect other programs if shut down; don't know what "other programs" is, so I don't want to touch it.

Task manager shows the following running at startup that I can actually tamper with (for some reason I am "denied access" despite being the admin):
1XConfig.exe
ati2evxx.exe
ctfmon.exe
explorer.exe
msmsgs.exe
ZCfgSvc.exe
All of these programs were running long before I had any problems. When I get the random fits of slow-down, no active programs increase in pagefiling useage except explorer.exe and, if watching a movie online, IExplorer, both of which go through the roof. However, I don't need to be web browsing for the fits to happen. They are most noticeable when running applications that use up a lot of pagefiling (like vbstudio, videogames, movies, msoffice-related programs, limewire, etc.), however the fits do happen when none of these are active or running, as can be seen when simply browsing My Computer.

Any help now?

Any help now?

The next time it slows down open task manager (right click on the toolbar & select), select the processes tab and scroll down to see which running process is using the bulk of your resources. Post that here and maybe one of us will know why.

From Start\run\msconfig\startup, you can safely uncheck msmsgs, won't make any difference. ZCfgSvc.exe is the intel NIC configuration tool, I don't see why it needs to run constantly in the background. 1XConfig.exe appears to be an SMC configuration utility so is unnecessary also. ati2evxx.exe is the ati display configuration utility, again your choice as to whether you want this running all the time as a background process. Leave ctfmon.exe & explorer.exe checked.

John

Captain, one possible problem involves ZCfgSvc.exe. I've read reports that this program can cause performance problems, and that it can be disabled without effecting your computer's connectivity, even though it is a core component for Intel's wireless NICS. It also appears to be a file name hijacked by by many bits of malware. But, I haven't any direct experience of either of these problems. I'm just reporting what I've read.

Still, I think there is some reason to believe that this isn't a very well-behaved bit of software, and it may be responsible for your system slowdowns and your Internet disconnects. You can use Task Manager to terminate it and then see what happens. Atodini's advice is right on the mark as well.