OT Computer Question

[Anonymous-0]

Every day at about 3PM I have something that runs on my computer that about brings it to a stop. Is there any way to tell whats running or scanning. Its windows xp system on a Dell computer. Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

[petetx]

check your windows auto update settings

 

[Anonymous-0]

Look in: Start> Control Panel> Automatic Updates and see if updates are scheduled to run at that time. You also have some other choices. Is your computer clock possibly off by 12-hours AM/PM?

 

[Anonymous-0]

Start...control panel... system...automatic updates.. should have a time.. mine is 8pm.
See if yours is 3pm if so change it.

 

[Howard H.]

Sounds like it could be an antivirus scan kicking on...

What are you running for AV?

It will most likely have its own internal scheduler...


Howard

 

[Howard H.]

Also, when it does that hit "ctrl-alt-del" at the same time to bring up the task manager...

Then click on the processes tab, and then the CPU heading to sort the processes into who is hogging the most CPU power.

It will be bouncing around, but it will quickly show you the name of the task that is causing the problem. It won't always be the top process - a lot of time it will be one bouncing around in positions 2-5 or so - but it will be causing huge amounts of disk activity - which cause the PC to slow down.

Howard

 

[onefarmer]

Check your antivirus settings. I'd bet it is set to do a scan at that time. It will definitely bring the system to a slow crawl. Just reset it to 5am once a week.

If your on dialup and windows is set to update, it might slow it down but shouldn't take up that much. Look in start>settings>control panel>system>updates tab for this setting.

 

[Pooh Bear]

Sometime when your computer is running fine,
right click on the task bar and select Task Manager.
Click on the Processes tab and make note of all the running processes.
Then when the computer slows down, repeat the above,
and this time look for an extra process running.

My computer slows to a crawl everyday between 6am and 10am.
That is when I have my defragger program scheduled to run.

Pooh Bear

 

[Mattlt]

...and while you're in the Control Panel, check for an entry called Scheduled Tasks. There might be something there as well.

 

[Allan in NE]

Why do you defrag every day?

Every 6 weeks to two months ought to be more than enough.

Allan

 

[Dan-IA]

automatic updates are 3pm by default. that's my vote.

 

[Pooh Bear]

(quoted from post at 06:25:56 03/28/08) Why do you defrag every day?

Every 6 weeks to two months ought to be more than enough.

Allan

I used to do a lot of video work on my computer.
It speeds things up to have a freshly defragged hard drive.
Especially helpful when transferring VHS tapes to the computer.

I set up my defragger program to run 6am-10am because
I am usually not at my computer at that time.

Pooh Bear