Any programs to detect slown pc AND connection

Hi
I saw the first post, but it was started in 2006 and I'm thinking there may be better ways now. Here's my question.

Is there a program or suite of programs that will somewhat automatically detect why a computer is slow and why an internet connection might be slow.

Some expanded context: Sometimes I don't whether it's internet connection or the computer. I'll opena couple of programs, then suddenly everything slows down a bit. I'll open task mgr and won't really see anything troublesome on the performance tab, yet half my programs are not responding. I use QB, OUTLOOK and Firefox. (IE I find is the slowest most troublesome program to browse internet with) -- My wife's comptuer is even worse. She's on wireless while my box is the "main" computer tethered in via ethernet cable, so I can see hers being a littel slow, but we're talking 30 seconds between mouseclicks using IE and browsing Wikipedia.

We're about to get new computers, but these are only 4-ish years old. Not ancient, and decent hard drives, etc.

So my quesiton is , is there SOMETHING easy for a program that will at least POINT me in the right direction, even if it's not conclusive. Soemthing that will hint as to whether the fact that every time I open IE my screen turns completely white and freezes for 30 seconds (on every comptuer in the house) is internet related or computer related, things like that....

Thanks for any information ....

Hi Hotwired99 -
The tutorial listings at The Top of XP Forum do start from 2006 but they do still contain information related to todays general problems -

At the start it says to scan in Safe Mode, but this is now generally only related to where a severe problem persists
The articles about running Defrag once a month, daily scans with a good A/virus and deleting browsing history are still required
Have you ever had the inside of the computer cleaned / dusted and the fans checked ??

Please post a snapshot with Speccy -
How to Publish a snapshot with Speccy <<-- Directions

Only do this on one system, this is because us slow people can only handle one system at a time ......

Thank You -

Please try this:

Connect your computer directly to the modem to bypass the router. See if the system runs faster.

How old is your router?

Since the issue is with ALL programs and not just your internet connection it could be any of a number of things, including malware. Have you run full scans with BOTH your anti virus app AND MalwareBytes? If not, please do so now.

Next are ram and hd tests:

To check the ram, download memtest (http://memtest.org/). Burn it to a cd using a dedicated .iso burning utility (http://www.petri.co.il/how_to_write_iso_files_to_cd.htm), make sure the cd drive is at the top of the boot order in bios, then boot to the newly created cd and run the utility.

To check the hd, boot to the Recovery Console and run chkdsk /r



If everything comes back clean, let's try a selective startup:

Open msconfig and on the General tab choose "selective startup" (uncheck all three items) and reboot. Does the problem still occur? If not, start adding items back to msconfig one or two at a time, rebooting after each change, until the problem reappears and you'll have identified the offending process. This is clearly a time consuming procedure, but it is the best way to determine if some process loading with the system is the cause of your problem.
After you've isolated the cause, do not use msconfig to permanently disable the process. Instead, if it is a service go to START - RUN and type: services.msc (then press enter) and disable the service OR, if it a program, you can download & run a simple app such as Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel (http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml) to enable, disable, or otherwise manage startup programs.

Thank you all for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate it.

If firefox is slow, you may have too many addons.


Click Tools
Select Addons
Click the Extension tab

Post back what you found please.

Since your problem is with everything, let's not worry about the Firefox add ons for now.

Open MSconfig disable everything except your antivirus.If you connect wirelessly then do not disable anything that reads wireless.REoot.You do not need anything other than your AV starting with your machine.

http://netsquirrel.com/msconfig/index.html


Hit the start button in lower left hand corner. Then in the run box type msconfig, then hit the services tab then put a check mark in hide microsoft services what is listed there,after hiding microsoft services?Please post back to us in a vertical list.


http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902
unzip Autoruns to your desktop run it.See any entries that read file not found when you see them right click and select delete do this only for the entries that read file not found also uncheck any scheduled task that are set to run on your machine,close the program.


After completing the above task then Please download TFC by Old Timer and save it to your desktop.
http://oldtimer.geekstogo.com/TFC.exe
Save any unsaved work. TFC will close ALL open programs including your browser!
double click on TFC.exe to run it.If TFC doesnt prompt a reboot then please do so manually

Hit start at the lower left hand corner type cmd in the run box and copy and paste the following info chkdsk /r Hit enter it will ask to schedule a check disk on the next reboot hit y type exit then reboot your machine it will take a good while to finish let it be this is normal.

Please download MINITOOLBOX and run it.
http://download.bleepingcomputer.com/farbar/MiniToolBox.exe

Checkmark following boxes:


Report IE Proxy Settings
Report FF Proxy Settings
List content of Hosts
List last 10 Event Viewer log
List Installed Programs
List Users, Partitions and Memory size


Click Go and post the result.

Then defrag your machine. http://www.vcsoftwares.com/SpeeDefrag.html

Hotwired99 - I know you're new here and you're getting a lot of suggestions in this thread - and some may be redundant.. Let me suggest that as a starting point you simply follow the suggestions in the first three replies above and then let's see where we are. Thanks.

Hi all,
here is my speccy URL: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/aVUCukcM2P6Fk38uw3YQZFu
I'll get started on some of the other items!