I've been grumbling at the desktop for a while as it seems slow to open anything. Took some videos, MP4 last weekend and they barely play. Sound is passably continuous but the video shows one frame about every five seconds. Not consecutive frames but out of a 20 second vid I get the start frame, the end frame and a couple from somewhere in the middle. Plays fine on a friends laptop.
Its about 6 years old, XP home, 2Gb ram and a AMD Sempron 2800+ 2.01 GHz.
I have cleaned out old programs, updated quicktime, tried VLC but no joy.

I noticed when opening taskmanager that CPU usage goes to a red 100% sometimes for a couple of seconds. That's with nothing else running apart from 29 total processes. System idle shows 99% most of the time. Nothings admitting to using much memory. Heaviest user is avast at 30,000.

I have avast, mbam, spybot and ccleaner and have defragged. Even did an online scan with trend micro and someone else which showed no problems.

Any ideas as to what might be wrong? I don't fancy a fresh install of XP as I only have discs for sp2 and it takes an age to download sp3 (if you still can). I don't really fancy windows 7 either. My ability to learn new stuff has dropped off in the last few years and it's hard to remember what I had for breakfast. Is it me that needs the black capsule or my old computer?

My first thought is that you have too much protection. Most of those products don't sit well with each other, and can cause problems themselves.

I know you said you don't want to do a fresh install of XP, but I find its the best thing to keep a machine running. I do it once every six months at the very least, even now I've moved to Windows 7. XP will still update correctly if you reinstall it.

I'd also get rid of Quicktime, it's not very good. I find the k-lite package with it's built in player works a lot better and is very lightweight.

I think the best thing would be to make a list of the programs you really want to keep and be ruthless in the 'add or remove programs' in control panel.

If it were me I'd bite the bullet and reinstall the OS, check your downloads you may still have the install file for sp3. Have you tried disc clean up? It will delete all the recycling bin, temporary files etc

You could also try cleaning your registry but I have not had much experience doing this.

Oh and forget about the system idle process, the processor cannot just do nothing, it has to do something so windows makes this process to use the processor while it is not needed.

IMO Windows 7 is windows' attempt at making their systems more like mac, they are far less user intensive but it takes up more space and will run slower.

Oh also I use VLC cause it has almost all plugins pre installed, failing that just windows media player but I've always found quicktime rubbish and it always seems to want to update!

[Edited on 7/7/12 by vanepico]

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Originally posted by vanepico
IMO Windows 7 is windows' attempt at making their systems more like mac, they are far less user intensive but it takes up more space and will run slower.
[Edited on 7/7/12 by vanepico]

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Hmm all the schools I went to had all of the graphical animations turned off and my uni actually had it set to look like windows 95 to save memory

That is surprising cause you see all these computers who specifically say they are made for windows 7.

Nah we support 80 odd primary schools (vary in size from 30 pupils to 600) and surprisingly even netbooks with atom processors seem happier on windows 7!

Just dug out an old computer that has XP sp3 running on a celeron 3.33 GHz with 2G ram and not much else. Downloaded VLC and it plays the files fine so they are OK. (No audio driver so I can't hear it but the vids playing smoothly.)
Still doesn't help with my proper puter. I have deleted all I don't use, c cleaned and used the registry cleaner. I did update all drivers to the latest I could find. Deleted all spare programs. Removed real player. I need quicktime as I store the family's I-tunes librarys although I don't play them. There seem to be no error messages and all scans are fine. A clean install of windows xp it is then.

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Originally posted by pmc_3

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Originally posted by vanepico
IMO Windows 7 is windows' attempt at making their systems more like mac, they are far less user intensive but it takes up more space and will run slower.
[Edited on 7/7/12 by vanepico]

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I work for an IT company who specialise in schools. Although Windows 7 takes up more space and is a bit more memory hungry we find in almost all cases it runs better than xp on the same machine.

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Originally posted by Dusty
Just dug out an old computer that has XP sp3 running on a celeron 3.33 GHz with 2G ram and not much else. Downloaded VLC and it plays the files fine so they are OK. (No audio driver so I can't hear it but the vids playing smoothly.)
Still doesn't help with my proper puter. I have deleted all I don't use, c cleaned and used the registry cleaner. I did update all drivers to the latest I could find. Deleted all spare programs. Removed real player. I need quicktime as I store the family's I-tunes librarys although I don't play them. There seem to be no error messages and all scans are fine. A clean install of windows xp it is then.

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Why not just use that computer then?

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How big is the hard drive? Normally a computer uses spare space as 'ram' to make the computer run faster and if they are clogged up.

Short of reinstalling I can't see a solution, you could always just use both computers side by side for different things?

80 Gb. 20gb unused and defragged twice in last 2 weeks. I thought that the computer only used hard disc space when ram was all in use and apart from the rattle from the disc working like the clappers, processes virtually came to a halt. It's not doing that. CPU may show 80-100% use but there is always 500+ spare ram.

[Edited on 8/7/12 by Dusty]

Disconnect your 'internet' cable.
See if any programs complain that they've lost internet connection. It may be something constantly trying to update.
Turn off all the antivirus stuff.
Is it quick now? If so its your AV stuff.
Re-enable some of the AV and connect back to the internet.

Good luck!
Hugh

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Originally posted by Dusty
80 Gb. 20gb unused and defragged twice in last 2 weeks. I thought that the computer only used hard disc space when ram was all in use and apart from the rattle from the disc working like the clappers, processes virtually came to a halt. It's not doing that. CPU may show 80-100% use but there is always 500+ spare ram.

[Edited on 8/7/12 by Dusty]

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I'm always fixing PCs with clogged up registries and I'd say back up all your data and reinstall Windows every time. You could spend days trying to clean up an old installation without any guarantee it will be 100% whilst it will only take a couple of hours to reinstall Windows and the service packs from scratch to start with a clean slate. It's a job that is best done whilst you are watching telly or doing something else.

I always found it wasn't the installation of windows itself that was the problem with 'just' reinstalling. I was the other programs/re-registering (and you registered email has changed)/finding those missing passwords, the odd unreadable or missing disk, and of course the nagging fear that you'd destroy all that irreplacable data, even though you have a decent backup (you think). There are also the things where you end up upgrading the software because you're reinstalling anyway, then that doesnt work for files you already have.....
This sort of thing is the reason I changed to a macs - I haven't re-installed anything in the last 7 or 8 years, except when I've bought new computers.
Regards
Hugh

I'm taking it as read that soeone would always use the inbuilt Files & settings transfer wizard (Windows XP) or Windows Easy Transfer (Windows 7) to save their data, email, application settings and favourites to a handy export file on an external drive before they reformatted their hard drive.