Slow All Programs Menu

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain (More info?)

Occasionally, when I click the All Programs Menu, explorer.exe goes to
100% cpu usage and the menu doesn't appear until about 20-30 (sometimes
longer) seconds later. During this time, the taskbar is unresponsive
and it seems like the entire shell is hung. I've went though all the
shortcuts in the menu and verified all of them are valid. Once the menu
is displayed, the problem doesn't exhibit itself until 'something'
causes the menu to refresh.

System:
HP Pavilion Laptop
AMD 1700+ CPU
768 MB of ram
60 GB 7200 RPM HD using UDMA Mode 5 (20 GB free)
XP Pro SP2 with all current patches
Trend Micro Internet Security 2005
SpySweeper4/AdAware

No viruses/trojans/etc are being identified by my scanners.

Any ideas?

 

[galen]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain (More info?)

In news:1125430255.496417.129100@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com,
tragib <tragib@gmail.com> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

> Occasionally, when I click the All Programs Menu, explorer.exe goes to
> 100% cpu usage and the menu doesn't appear until about 20-30
> (sometimes longer) seconds later. During this time, the taskbar is
> unresponsive and it seems like the entire shell is hung. I've went
> though all the shortcuts in the menu and verified all of them are
> valid. Once the menu is displayed, the problem doesn't exhibit itself
> until 'something' causes the menu to refresh.
>
> System:
> HP Pavilion Laptop
> AMD 1700+ CPU
> 768 MB of ram
> 60 GB 7200 RPM HD using UDMA Mode 5 (20 GB free)
> XP Pro SP2 with all current patches
> Trend Micro Internet Security 2005
> SpySweeper4/AdAware
>
> No viruses/trojans/etc are being identified by my scanners.
>
> Any ideas?

It could be that you have a great deal of processes running in the
background. A decent malware scan was a good start. I'm hoping you did so
with updated definitions and in safe mode without networking. When you're
attempting to open this your PCs active malware scanning engines could very
well be the cause of slowing that down. When was the last time you cleaned
some junk off your system, killed some programs you never use, and
defragged? Below are a couple of interesting links that you might want to
follow.

Startup Control Panel:
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

Malware Cleaning :
http://kgiii.info/windows/all/general/malwarefix.html

And if none of those seem effective then:

Explorer as a Separate Process :
http://kgiii.info/windows/XP/tips/sep_explorer.html

Just so you know editing the registry isn't the brightest thing to do though
many of us do it all the time. However, you have been warned. For a better
warning:
http://kgiii.info/windows/all/general/regedit_warn.html

Galen
--

"You know that a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his
trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will
come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all."

Sherlock Holmes

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.perform_maintain (More info?)

Thanks for the reply, I've ran the scanners in both normal and safe
mode. Nothing is found in either case. I have two other desktops setup
almost identical to this laptop, they all have similiar software
installed. Neither of them have the issue. I don't think it's related
to an 'overload' of running processes as the same problem occurs in
Safe Mode. Also, the disk is defragged about every 2-3 weeks with
Diskeeper (it's using NTFS). I don't think it's related to power saving
as I change the Power Scheme to Always On or Home/Desktop and it occurs
as well. I'm at a complete loss as to what could cause it.

The unfortunate thing is that I can't recreate the problem 'at will'.
It's a random occurance. It would be a bit easier to troubleshoot if I
could...

Cheers,
Travis