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slow laptop
Dusty - 13/12/07 at 12:56 PM

Just cleaning up daughters laptop after infection with win32.murlo.ff.rtk which has been fun, not.
Sorted the qttask.exe problem that acer laptops seem to be prone to.
However looking down the list of processes which are running it lists 8 instances of svchost.exe running under Local service, Network or System. Is this normal is there yet more mayhem going on? At what point do you throw in the towel and throw out the hard disc?

Mr Whippy - 13/12/07 at 01:00 PM

I have a similar problem with my home computer, it's pretty slow now and when I look at task manager there are loads of things running. I can most of them down but wish I could just stop them for good.

dan__wright - 13/12/07 at 01:35 PM

the svchost thing is normal.

run the following programs on it and it should help

spybot search and destroy
adaware
cleanup (set to remove all temp files)
regcleaner

then defrag

[Edited on 13/12/07 by dan__wright]

viatron - 13/12/07 at 02:39 PM

but turn off system restore first or you could be back to square one after spending hours cleaning up

Surrey Dave - 13/12/07 at 03:45 PM

can't you run Msconfig and disable the stuff you don't need under the startup tab?

onzarob - 13/12/07 at 04:12 PM

use process explorer and it will tell you which processes have spawned svchosts.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/processexplorer.mspx

dhutch - 13/12/07 at 05:19 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Surrey Dave
can't you run Msconfig and disable the stuff you don't need under the startup tab?

Yeah that too.
- Although if you have spybot installed anyway, you can do it thought that, which often gives a usfull description to an otherwise meaningless file name/location which saves googling it to see what it is.

I also have O&O defrag (pro ed) installed and set up to run routinely which i fine helps, espcially if you have a relativly small/full/slow HDD as most laptops do.


Daniel

Johnmor - 13/12/07 at 07:26 PM

There is free soft ware from "tune up" that is great for editing your start up programs.
I use it every few weeks makes all the difference.

http://www.tune-up.com/

Dusty - 14/12/07 at 03:01 AM

One of my problems is not enough knowledge. All those instances of svchost.exe may well be doing important things. No problem 'using' msconfig to control start-up items. I'm just not sure what items to control. I currently have 4 items in startup enabled and 27 disabled, none of which appears to have any link to svchost.exe.
I have downloaded a trial version of Tune-up which looks to have many handy functions and will take some time to work through.
It seems that svchost is a friendly sort of rent-a-mob file, bit like the civil service. Grossly overstaffed, hungry for resources, duplicates everything, can't be sacked and you can't do without it