A new problem

I really don't know what I'd Google for, so I'll just explain this one.
I'm working on a computer that was all bogged down + had a moderate amount
of spyware. I took a pile of stuff out of startup and now it's running
pretty snappy-like.
It's an older Dell, 1.8Ghz with 256Mb ram. XP Home, SP2 up to date.
I downloaded free Avast with IE from download.com. It came reasonably fast.
I installed it and then went to their registration page. The page only
partially loaded and then just sat there. Well, sometime that page is slow
so I decided to try later.
I had installed Adaware earlier, but couldn't get the updates. That happens
too sometimes, so I installed SuperAntispyware and it balked before I got
all the updates as well.
Then I discovered that if I go to *any* webpage that has a lot of stuff on
it, the whole page won't load. And when it stops, it stops. It'll stay at
that point forever.
Installed Firefox. Same thing.
This guy uses Outlook for email. I had to start Outlook three times before
I finally got his 6 or so messages downloaded.
I can copy big files from one of my computers at lightning speed, but I
tried a different network card anyway. No help. I tried different memory.
Finally I threw in another hard drive and installed XP on it with his
restore disk. The problem went away on the new install. That pretty well
rules out the computer itself.
Unfortunately, it is unfeasible to go with a new install since he has too
much stuff installed that he doesn't have the CD's for.
What might be wrong?

--
--- Long live Fat32! ---

This is gonna be hard to get by, once a machine gets infected like that,
everything on it gets messed up. About his applications, might try to copy
files and see if works...



"Menno Hershberger" wrote:

> I really don't know what I'd Google for, so I'll just explain this one.
> I'm working on a computer that was all bogged down + had a moderate amount
> of spyware. I took a pile of stuff out of startup and now it's running
> pretty snappy-like.
> It's an older Dell, 1.8Ghz with 256Mb ram. XP Home, SP2 up to date.
> I downloaded free Avast with IE from download.com. It came reasonably fast.
> I installed it and then went to their registration page. The page only
> partially loaded and then just sat there. Well, sometime that page is slow
> so I decided to try later.
> I had installed Adaware earlier, but couldn't get the updates. That happens
> too sometimes, so I installed SuperAntispyware and it balked before I got
> all the updates as well.
> Then I discovered that if I go to *any* webpage that has a lot of stuff on
> it, the whole page won't load. And when it stops, it stops. It'll stay at
> that point forever.
> Installed Firefox. Same thing.
> This guy uses Outlook for email. I had to start Outlook three times before
> I finally got his 6 or so messages downloaded.
> I can copy big files from one of my computers at lightning speed, but I
> tried a different network card anyway. No help. I tried different memory.
> Finally I threw in another hard drive and installed XP on it with his
> restore disk. The problem went away on the new install. That pretty well
> rules out the computer itself.
> Unfortunately, it is unfeasible to go with a new install since he has too
> much stuff installed that he doesn't have the CD's for.
> What might be wrong?
>
> --
> --- Long live Fat32! ---
>