Sluggish and Laggy Help

[Scary Womanizing Pig Mask]

So I've been having computer troubles, which are aggravated by the fact that I have the technological aptitude of the judge in Phoenix Wright. My computer has gotten really slow in the past week. It's never been particularly fast (especially at startup,) but now everything takes a painfully long amount of time to open, and has a tendency to crash while doing so. TF2 in particular is taking an absurd amount of time. I know it's big, but it's getting a bit ridiculous. Once loaded, joining a server is even worse; and when I finally make it on, the lag ranges from annoying to crippling. It's not just TF2 either, L4D has gotten pretty mucky as well, which leads to me accidentally shooting up my team when attempting to take delicate shots. Any ideas what could be going wrong? I deleted some old games off my Steam Que so my used:free space is 206:88.8 GB, which isn't that big of a difference from what it was. everything was running fine last week, and the only thing I changed was NOT installing a DS Emulator (which strangely enough is NOT running swimmingly.) Is it possible there was a virus on it that Norton can't find? Or is it something with my ports? It would make sense, what with the trouble I had trying to join some L4D Servers.

Any ideas?

[Versus]

specs?

[rumsfald]

any new noises coming from the hard drives?

any new noises coming from the psu?

any new hardware?

is startup still fast?

[Scary Womanizing Pig Mask]

specs?

Not sure off the top of my head. I'd have to look them up.

any new noises coming from the hard drives?

Sounds like it's working harder

any new noises coming from the psu?

Don't know what that is >.<

any new hardware?

Nope

is startup still fast?

Slow as always

[copulatingduck]

You could try defragging. Sometimes I've had issues with my stuff chugging, and a defrag actually helped out a lot. Also, like Versus said, system specs would be helpful. :3

edit: Oh god Norton is terribad! Personally, I can't run Norton because it makes my system chug too much for my taste. You might try disabling it to see if that improves performance at all. If it does, I would suggest downloading a virus-scanner that doesn't do active scans and just make sure you browse and download safer. :-\

[Scary Womanizing Pig Mask]

You could try defragging. Sometimes I've had issues with my stuff chugging, and a defrag actually helped out a lot. Also, like Versus said, system specs would be helpful. :3

I think I actually had one of those scheduled. Will do right away!

As for specs, how would one go about finding those? I know I wrote them down at first, but I've long since lost that post it note

[rumsfald]

specifications including age of each part (as per duck, versus). drive thrashing could be in need of defrag (per duck), or could be in the death-throes. HD most likely cause of global slowage (barring virii).  The power-supply would more likely be giving you new random freezes / crashes / reboots if that were going, but still a rule-out.

a right click on my computer or system properties will give you a few specs, also hw monitor http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

[Scary Womanizing Pig Mask]

specifications including age of each part (as per duck, versus). drive thrashing could be in need of defrag (per duck), or could be in the death-throes. HD most likely cause of global slowage (barring virii).  The power-supply would more likely be giving you new random freezes / crashes / reboots if that were going, but still a rule-out.

a right click on my computer or system properties will give you a few specs, also hw monitor http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

Bought the comp all together and had it for two years. My Computer Properties reveals it's and ACPI Multiprocessor PC, with x2 Intel Core 2 CPU at 6600 @ 2.40GHz. Is any of that useful knowledge?

Thank you so much for helping me with this, I know how frustrating it is to help someone who's technologically inept, and I really appreciate this <3


[edit]Just realized, I have a 360 controller plugged in for the DSEmu, could that be causing some problems?[/edit]

[rumsfald]

I'm still leaning toward virus or HD dying, depending on the results of the scheduled HD defrag.

[Scary Womanizing Pig Mask]

I'm still leaning toward virus or HD dying, depending on the results of the scheduled HD defrag.

Did the analysis, said there was barely any reason to defragment. Strange thing is everything's running fine for now. I'll see how long it lasts though, and if the lag is still there online

[Scary Womanizing Pig Mask]

Fixed it! It was preloading a bunch of stuff on launch, which was slowing everything down considerably. Lag is just because my interent connection is terrible Thanks for the help!

[CaffeinePowered]

Fixed it! It was preloading a bunch of stuff on launch, which was slowing everything down considerably. Lag is just because my interent connection is terrible Thanks for the help!

msconfig is your friend

[Eschatos]

[quote author=Scary Womanizing Pig Mask link=topic=1794.msg50165#msg50165 date=1226956364]
Fixed it! It was preloading a bunch of stuff on launch, which was slowing everything down considerably. Lag is just because my interent connection is terrible Thanks for the help!

msconfig is your friend
[/quote]

I think I need to run this, my computer's been rather slow lately.