Factory Restore

[Gingerbread Man]

Apologies if this has been done to death, but I have searched for it. Someone once mentioned to me that the only way they can keep their computer running smoothly is to completely reset it every so often, wiping everything and then loading things back on. I have a 4yr old Acer Travelmate 240 (probably not necessary that I tell you this, but hey) running XP Home and it is driving me nuts.
I have used the FAQ section to get advice on ridding my computer of spyware, adware and viruses, but none have made any noticeable difference. Defragmenting also does not help. Is it even possible to go back to the start, or will it wipe the operating system and everything else that was here when I got it?? At the moment it is sitting here using 95% of the CPU to run two IE windows and task manager. A little ridiculous I feel.

Sorry if I sound like a complete numpty here - I don't understand the deeper workings of my machine.

Cheers

Ginger ;)

[Saab Dastard]

Factory RestoreIt's not an etch-a-sketch!

You can use a number of mechanisms to remove and replace the existing installation of the operating system.

You can do a "clean" install of the OS either by using the built-in "recovery" partition installed by the manufacturer (obviously the only things that can be installed are those originally installed in this partition), or by using a valid OS installation CD.

However, you WILL also lose any installed applications (e.g. word processor, spreadsheet etc.), you will lose (almost) all your configuration settings and you MAY lose all your stored data - unless you copy all your data to a different disk or computer.

By "lose" I mean that you will need to re-install them from whatever installation media you have. No installation media, no application.

You will also have to re-install any SPs and updates from MS subsequent to the patch level of your installation media.

A good starting place for help and advice on what you can do would be your user manual, the Acer website and the MS website.

SD

[Gingerbread Man]

Thanks for the advice, i'll see what I can do.

It's not an etch-a-sketch!

:) Reminds me of Eddie Izzard describing Noah's Ark as an 'etch-a-sketch end of the world'

Cheers

Ginger ;)

[ZH875]

Have you looked in 'Task Manager' to see what process is hogging the CPU?

Do you have automatic update turned ON, as this has had a problem which manifests itself as one of the 'svchost.exe' entries in task manager running at very high cpu rates, if there is one, terminate it and see what happens.

[Parapunter]

It's XP, so it actually is an etch-a-sketch.:p

[green granite]

Go here http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx
and download sysinernal's process explorer, gives a much better overview of what your programmes are doing than "task manager, and you can set it to load when you use the 3 fingered salute.

I had severe problems with running peer to peer stuff from both Channel4 and the BBC as McAfee opened a copy of one of it's files for each of the download threads and scaned each one as it arrived :ugh:

[Keef]

I've sorted out numerous friends whose computers were crawling so slowly they thought there was something wrong with their (relatively new) well-specced machines.

Apart from removing one spyware and two viruses (out of a couple of dozen machines), most of the fixes consisted of removing McAfee and/or Symantec firewalls and anti-virus, and installing ZoneAlarm (if they didn't have a router with a NAT firewall), and AVG free plus the usual Spyware and Adware protection stuff.

It seems that McAfee and Symantec are like a very large handbrake locked firmly ON. Maybe it's something in the default configuration, I don't know.

I usually also upgrade them to Service Pack 2 of their Win XP version (if not already there), and switch off all Windows updates.

I'm sure purist Microsoft experts and McAfee/Symantec users will be horrified, but in every case that approach has sorted the problems.

[Saab Dastard]

Do you have on-demand (read) AV running?

Whenever a large file is opened by an application, the AV scanner is going to scan it, and hen AV is running it will usually take up nigh-on 100% of CPU time, so everything else - including TM - just has to wait.

I found that java :* was causing this on my system, so I added the java .exe's (large files) to the exclusions list and it improved the situation considerably.

A lot of websites seem to feel the need to execute jscript (java) for no reason other than to look cool. Hence why it can affect your browsing.

SD

[FlyerFoto]

Try Kaspersky Internet Security - it's usually available at a reasonably cheap price (think I paid about £10) and runs quite happily in the background without slowing things up!