Computer help from the gurus - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

elau · #1 06-27-2003, 01:47 PM

My laptop is acting very strange the last couple of days. It is a Dell Latitude CPx running NT 4.0 with 512 MB RAM.

The hard drive constantly churning and the page refresh is very slow. I have tried to play with the virtual memory to see if that makes a difference but not.

Currently, this is my settings:
Total paging file size is set at 100 MB
Boost is set in the middle
Regisry size is set at 49

Hard drive capacity is 5G, but I noticed that it diminishes very quickly. It seems like something is eating up my disk space but I don't know where to look. I can go from 975 MB to 355 MB just to open IE and look at a web page.

I have set my Internet Options as follows:
Days to keep pages history: 1
Privacy: medium

As soon as the HD stops churning, everything runs smoothly. I also notice my fan is constantly running, and the machine runs hot all the time. There is nothing abnormal that I can identify with the Task Manager.

Does that mean my HD is about to crash?
Bad memory?
Have a TSR program somewhere killing my disk space.

What can I do to fix my problem? Any help will be appreciated.

Rick Miley · #2 06-27-2003, 02:10 PM

That sounds like a virus. Get it scanned by the latest version of a good virus scanner. Even if you regularly run a virus scanner that checks incoming email, you could still be vulnerable.

A guy at work got hit a couple weeks ago with one that came in multiple parts in separate emails and pieced itself together. The symptoms were exactly the same as yours.

#3 06-27-2003, 02:13 PM

Do you have a Virus protection SW?

If you don't, a free alternative is available here.

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Best of all, it is online so updates are current. Not saying this site is the best but it does work.

#4 06-27-2003, 02:16 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by elau

Does that mean my HD is about to crash?
Bad memory?
Have a TSR program somewhere killing my disk space.

1. Possible if the churning is left uncorrected.
2. What does you system say on bootup? Check BOIS also to see what is being recognized.
3. Possible, what is does "Task Manager" say?

jsmith · #5 06-27-2003, 10:29 PM

previous suggestions are good. nt 4 doesn't have a built in defragger. i don't know if diskeeper lite is till available but that was a good freebie and nt 4 can behave that way if it is running on a badly fragmented disk. i'm curious what your temp internet file setting is at (give it lots of room). what does task manager say about memory utilization when this is going on (last tab)? if you have 512 Mb ram i doubt that it is paging. if the amount is less than your physical memory then something else is going on aside from paging...

elau · #6 06-27-2003, 11:42 PM

Great suggestions, guys.

I have spent all afternoon working on this thing. Thanks for the info on housecall. It scanned my disk and came up with +/-250 infected files. Mostly from NIMDA.A and NIMDA.GEN virus. Somehow my disk is populated with readme.eml files, and each of them is 10.9M

Cleaned the disk and claimed most of the disk space but I think there are still junks out there that I have not found yet.

Unfortunately NT does not come with defragmenter. I need some help to get some freebie so I can defrag this baby.

Again, thanks for all the help and suggestions.

jsmith · #7 06-28-2003, 08:58 AM

i found this old link - it might still work. i don't see the freeware anymore on the main site.

Download Diskeeper Lite

that nimda bug is nasty but there are numerous free fixes out there. upgrade your ie/outlook express to version 6 to patch those email holes...

elau · #8 06-28-2003, 12:59 PM

Jsmith, I am running IE 6. As a matter of fact the trouble started when I upgraded a few weeks ago. I need to download all the secuirty patches again to see if that helps.

Nowturbo · #9 06-28-2003, 07:52 PM

Elua, go to this site and download VoptXP to defrag your system. doesn't really matter if NT has no defrag on it, Microsnort has no good defraggers anywho.
here is the link .....http://www.voodoofiles.com/6258
Been using Vopt in various forms on my systems for about 2 years and it works very well and quickly. Bob

jsmith · #10 06-28-2003, 10:34 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by elau
Jsmith, I am running IE 6. As a matter of fact the trouble started when I upgraded a few weeks ago. I need to download all the secuirty patches again to see if that helps.

ie 6/outlook express are just a necessity these days to eliminate those holes. if i remember right, nimda attacks an iis vulnerability. if you are running iis for some reason, download the appropriate security patch for it...

elau · #11 06-29-2003, 04:59 PM

OK. Next probelm. Now that everything has been clenaed up. I cannot go to any link within a message. When I click on a link, another window will pop up but the nothing else. I know there fmust be something stopping me from opening more than one browser.