Wyodiver33

Hi all. I'm ruinning XP Pro. Recently I've noticed that about every 20 seconds the hourglass pops up next to my mouse pointer. It only stays for about 3 seconds. I can't figure out what is running that's causeing that. I have doen a full virus scan, used ad aware and Spybot. I have plenty of RAM (768 MB) so XP shouldn't be hammering the swap file. Any ideas?

__________________
I like stuff.

The_Dude

hmm...you are running something in the background that is doing something every 20 secs.

open up the task manager and see what's runnin under the 'programs'.

__________________
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal

Prophecy

I'm having a simplier problem. My pc is at the poin where it takes 20 secs to load on start-up, after you see the desktop(desktop is blank no icons.) I've run scandisk, i've defragged, i've run anti-virus programs. At times I'll only have 1 window open to get to my files, I click to open a new folder and my damn pc will go to an hour glass?!

Other than that 1 window up, I have a mass of things running in my task manager under processes but I have no clue which ones I can end-task/close without killing windows...

__________________
La Disciplina È La Mia Spada,
La Fede È Il Mio Schermo,
Non salti Ciecamente In Incertezza,
E Potete Raccogliere Le Ricompense.

HeyAgain

Can you list what you programs you are running in your taskbar.

And if you could, perhaps print screen a picture of the processes you are currently running within XP. How many processes are you currently running?

Also, have a look at Windows XP Home and Professional Service Configurations by Black Viper

I have reduced the number processes from about 25 to 16. I used the "SAFE" configuration.

devnull

If you want to control what programs are starting up on your computer when you boot, I suggest running 'msconfig' from Start->Run and being picky about what starts up. Start by unchecking one or two programs at first and rebooting to make sure your computer is still functional cause yes, believe it or not, Windows does still need kernel32.dll and all that fun stuff to be running :P But yeah, try using msconfig and slowly removing non-necessary stuff from your startup and from your Services. There's a LOT of things that Windows turns on by default in your services that are not required -at all-. If you want to know more about the services, do a search for windows xp services descriptions on google or something of that nature. There is plenty of info out there.

phukraut

try hijack this! (http://www.tomcoyote.org/hjt/)

Prophecy

I'd post a picture of my process, but I don't have anywhere to host files.
I'm running a total of 34 process: 15 under system, 1 local, 1 network and the rest are under the name of the user that's logged in.

As for the applications/programs open, I can have none at all or just one window open or an arm load of programs, it doesn't make a differance the same thing happens.

__________________
La Disciplina È La Mia Spada,
La Fede È Il Mio Schermo,
Non salti Ciecamente In Incertezza,
E Potete Raccogliere Le Ricompense.

longjohns

there are online lists of processes which explain what each program is and whether it's necessary. sometimes i google for the .exe names to get info as well.

maybe indexing service?? or system restore?? (less likely)

34 processes is a lot - i'd bet you have some driver software running that's not really needed. for some things you can uninstall the fancy interfaces and just do simpler installs of the drivers only (i think this is referred to as an "INF install"-- ??)

when's the last time you reinstalled windows?

you could try one of the registry cleaning programs

zenmaster10665

Try switching back off the "Show Common Tasks" in your file explorer. Tools -> Folder Options -> Tasks...

Change this to "Use Windows Classic Folders."

Hope this helps!!

__________________
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.
He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."
-Kurt Vonnegut

Prophecy

Registry cleaning program? any good examples? I don't want something else thats gonna be a pain in the ass to uninstall. And I've never re-installed windows, its just like I got it from the store.

__________________
La Disciplina È La Mia Spada,
La Fede È Il Mio Schermo,
Non salti Ciecamente In Incertezza,
E Potete Raccogliere Le Ricompense.

longjohns

the one i downloaded is called regscrub and it seems to be a pretty good program. of course you want to make sure to do thorough backups first, yadda yadda ;-)

by no means exhausive list, but here's some program lists:

http://www.answersthatwork.com/Taskl...s/tasklist.htm

i think reinstalling windows every once in a while is a good idea, although it is much easier if you have an easy way to backup - ideally a second hard drive

Prophecy

Thanks thats a great site, I found this one there, it sounds like my problem:

Does anyone know anything else about IGFxTray.exe and HKCMD.EXE before I go removing them?

__________________
La Disciplina È La Mia Spada,
La Fede È Il Mio Schermo,
Non salti Ciecamente In Incertezza,
E Potete Raccogliere Le Ricompense.

TrogDor

I had a simular problem once. Every 2 to 5 mins my system would just slow to a crawl, RAM goes to MAX, pagefile goes to MAX, then it goes back to normal after 30 seconds. Turns out the problem was a memory leak in winbar. Do you have any third party programs that run all the time? If you do, try shutting down each of them one by one until the problem stops.