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[popsofctown]

At some point today, my computer kicked a gear down much slower.  I don't remember doing anything stupid, but I figure I got some malware or something somehow.  Was just playing a flash game on kongregate.

Has anyone had any positive experience with any of those cleanup sites, or, have any ideas? I tried reinstalling Chrome and restarting my computer.  Even offline applications like dungeon crawl seem slow.

[sudgy]

First, I upvoted the post for the thread title, not what happened.

Anyway, I've never used those cleanup sites and don't trust them.  I would suggest you find a free antivirus scanner (all of the computers at my house have avast, but your preference is likely different (I've also heard good things about superantispyware) and malware scanner (malwarebytes is the most popular I'm pretty sure).  If neither of them do anything, you could do a system restore to a few days ago.  Registry Mechanic is another random program that doesn't deal with malicious software, but cleans up your computer and can greatly increase your computer's agility.

Also, remember that computers age just like everything else and get slower to.  I would say that was the problem if it wasn't sudden.

[Davio]

Computers gather dust, just like your coffee table. Even when you uninstall something, there are a lot of leftovers like config settings (just in case you reinstall), registry keys, etc.

I often use CCleaner to get rid of most of the junk, does the registry as well.
I also use Sysinternals Autoruns to get rid of stuff that's loaded when you boot, like Google or Adobe's update. You have to know what you're doing though.

I use Adblock plus for Chrome to block ads.

[Rubby]

Nomination for next thread title: Computer's Charisma Wiped

[blueblimp]

Usually, feeling slow indicates there is some process you don't care about that is using a large amount of CPU or memory. The first thing I'd try is to check for what processes are using a lot of CPU or memory and figure out whether they are useful. On a Mac, you'd look at Activity Monitor. On Windows, I guess Task Manager? (I don't use Windows a lot.)

[sudgy]

Usually, feeling slow indicates there is some process you don't care about that is using a large amount of CPU or memory. The first thing I'd try is to check for what processes are using a lot of CPU or memory and figure out whether they are useful. On a Mac, you'd look at Activity Monitor. On Windows, I guess Task Manager? (I don't use Windows a lot.)

In Windows, go to the Task Manager and click "Processes" (second tab on the top).  All of the processes will say how much CPU they use up (by percent, I'm pretty sure).

[popsofctown]

I've bookmarked this pagep so posting links for me would help me out a lot since navigating the ewe is very slow for me and so is even fixing these typos

task manager was one of my first hits.  my cpu usage is reportedly 100, but i can't identify anything as a culrpit.  i put a couple 5 percent takss to low priority because i didn't recognize them but that didn't help.  either the malware is doing stuff over in the services tab of task manager maybe or it is really smart and can pretend to be other things.   btw desktop window manager, "dwm.exe" is a real thing right? i was gonna kill that since it seemed made up but the file location came from system 32 and i figured it's hard tfor the malwarez to get into system 32. ok using a z there isn't a typo but i need this ugly mes of typos to at least be humorous

i will try the scanners

[popsofctown]

can i system restore even if my computer doesn't usually bac k itself up.  i have no useful files to worry about destroying

[popsofctown]

It takes Iron Will the minotaur ten seconds to walk down a k down a 20 tile hallway even though his dex is 8.  he will be the hearstrtstrings pulling mascot of my pitiful campaign for assistance

Iron will could not upload his opload his own image in less than a fortnight so he will be rendered as terrible ascii art

{_}
('..')   /]
/88\_/
\88/
I   I
I   I
U  U

Thos are bare hooves he can't even find shoes.  Wait actually bare feet minotaurs are human on bottom.  the point is that you need to think of the children

[pacovf]

Waitwaitwait I need to go get popcorn

[popsofctown]

I'm downloading avast.  Card hunter crashed today and that was the point where everything threereafter was slow.  Maybe it uses unity and maybe i should delete unity player because it is erpetually playing cardhunter? it was a 3d game

[popsofctown]

DON'T PLAY CARDHUNTER

[popsofctown]

Iron will is a Dungeon crawl character and he wants to remind you to never play card hunter.  he also recommends not worshiping nemelex xobeh god of cards, just to be safe

he says playing dominion is ok

[popsofctown]

Based on your contribution to the Punchstarter you gain various reward

2$ Iron Will help you find whatever you are looking for
3$ Iron Will Look Out for you
4$ Iron Will compete in a tournament of your choice in your name
5$ Iron will delete all other hero files and give you a copy of Iron Will
6$ Iron Wil complete his adventure for your sake and find you two treasures you want
6P$ Iron Will emailsave file to you and you control him the rest of his life.  anything iron wil would gain, you gain.  if you wish to delete iron will please put him on a floppy disk and don't put him in the discard basket until the next morning.

[Davio]

There used to be a program called HijackThis with which you could log system settings and create a dump to show here. Don't know if it's still useful or taken down by adware itself.

[Ozle]

Hijack this is still a thing and very useful.

Have you also tried turning the computer off (and perhaps more importantly back on again!)


If you've not taken a back up then you can't restore it, although windows might have done it automatically for you.
Still have the windows cd? Put it in and follow the steps to see if there is a restore point
And also run the repair facility on it

[Kirian]

Computers gather dust, just like your coffee table. Even when you uninstall something, there are a lot of leftovers like config settings (just in case you reinstall), registry keys, etc.

I want to quote this specifically to note that computers, like coffee tables, also collect actual dust.  If you haven't done so recently, open the cover and blow it out with compressed air.  Otherwise your processor may be heating up too much, which could also cause a slowdown.

[SwitchedFromStarcraft]

If you have never done this before (and therefore there is a LOT of dust), take the computer outside before you blow compressed air into it.

A better idea may be the judicious use of a small vacuum cleaner, especially the very small kind with flexible nozzle used for vacuuming keyboards.

I have had dust accumulation really slow down a desktop computer that was getting too hot, and cleaning out the dust helped enormously.

[popsofctown]

I found that there are system restore points created for every mandatory windows update so  I went back to the 12th of this month.  My computer has been healed and restored to its former glory (well, it's still a 5 year old laptop that doesn't get much figurative or literal cleaning, but it's at least 20 times faster now.

Iron Will lives on because system restore doesn't delete documents