Hi Michael,
Still slower than Funny Cide in the mud huh?
Lets see, an 8 GB with a bootleg XP(NO DISK).
Were you running WIN 98 before? Click,My Computer,then cursor on C Drive. How full is it?
Between WIN XP and NORTON 2003,lots of GBs. Is NORTON on auto,or do you enable when needed?
Are there any removable DISKS/DISKETTES left in your other DRIVES(A,B,D,E)? I do not know what
REGSCRUB is(REGISTRY SCRUBBER?).Maybe Jenny does.
Anyhow, clock speed is what,500 MHz? If you play
around with your REGESTRY FILES, your in some deep
stuff,over my skills. Last question,did you close
all programs running and run DEFRAG from system tools, not from NORTON utility? I try to run all
three,defrag/scan and clean disk each week.
Keep at it,
Be good,
Rick

WEll Ok I've got 2 gigabytes of free hard drive. I always keep at least a gig free No this was an original install of Windows Xp. RegScrub cleans up errors in the registry.I let it choose what to clean. I don't do it myself. I did Defrag No frags after I completed that.I do it pretty much regularly.Norton stays on auto always. I ran Windows XP Defrag first in Windows Desktop Interface and then went into Safe Mode and ran it there. XP says the drive is healthy.My two main problems now are this.
1.Windows XP is taking a LONG time to load up at startup. AFTER it loads up I can pretty much utilise ALL of my software and I DON'T notice a slowness. I don't sense or SEE any problems.
2.My CD-ROM drive is not functioning properly. I don't beleive it is broken. I feel VERY sure it is something I did to it unintentionaly but I can't trace back to what it was. Windows sees the D Drive in Device Manager. It identifies it and says it is enabled and working properly.I can put a music CD in it and it will play it. If I put a CD-ROM game in it it boinks me back IMMEDIATELY to my Windows Fesktop with no error message or anything like that.If I go to My Computer and look at D (My CD-ROM Drive I see it labels itself as simply "CD Drive D:" It's supposed to say what it says in Device Manager which is "Sony DVD-ROM DDU220E" I dont know how to label it in the My Computer section. There are no drivers to roll back. It has the same driver that was in there originally. The one that was assigned by Microsoft. What I DESPERATELY would like to know if the two problems I have described here are related to one another. I don't know but I certainly trust the expertise here. PitStop told my machine was slow but it thought the reason was a fragmented drive. This wasn't the case. Every tool that I have here in Windows XP says it finds NOTHING wrong with my hardware. That is why I was hoping someone here could look at the picture of the RegScrub I made and tell me if they thought these seven or eight errors are what is causing this. I seriously doubt it but I've got to do something.

what programs are starting up when windows kicks in? ie realplayer quicktime antivirus software and [blip] like bonzi buddy,

to check out whats starting up with Windows hit:

START -> RUN -> MSCONFIG -> "HIT ENTER"

and click the startup tab

and untick everything ""EXCEPT"" CTHELPER & UPDREG and your virus scanner of course

thats all i left and my system is happy as can be..

try it out and see if it helps... also scan for viruses and run adaware through ur system just incase

get ADAWARE here http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

~Polo

Ok I'm going to do that now.. I have one important question... Um you don't mean permanently taking all of the rest of the stuff out do you? Because I need a lot of that especially my firewall and all that. You mean just for a test right. I want to make sure II am understanding right. The reason being because previously I went to start-run -msconfig I did first Diagnostic Start up Subsequently I utilised Selective Startup next. I unticked each component separately each time I tested Process System INI then later on Process Win INI Then later Load System Services Then later Load Startup Items None of this worked. I have one very important question relating to the nature of problem, number 2 I mentioned (which may correspond with problem no 1) I just read about a file called MSCDEX.EXE Ok, I am using Windows XP Professional. I did a search whilst with the Windows XP Desktop for such a file called MSCDEX.EXE I searched in both categories "All or part of the file name" and also "A word or phrase in the file" It located no such file named MSCDEX.EXE Please pardon my ignorance but I'm not really sure....Within my OS Windows XP Professional, Should this file be in my system and if isn't (as it appears not to be) Could this be why my Sony DVD-ROM is not playing CD Games? Thankl you so very much. I still have that RegScrub Picture if anyone is willing to look at it. The reason being that I've found this extraordinary site where they have LOTS of drivers you can search for and get free but I don't know whether these files in RegScrub are Drivers or what. I don't know how to identify what they are and what is wrong with them. Thank you so much here! I am mighty grateful elikas1@comcast.net 609.695.0993 <img border="0" alt="" title="" src="graemlins/cry.gif" /> <img border="0" alt="" title="" src="graemlins/woozy.gif" />

I'm just butting in here on a whim. Haven't read every word of this thread but I'm wondering if 1 Gig left on the harddrive wouldn't affect you in a negative way? Also, how much RAM do you have? Having said that, I'm outta here!

MSCDEX is for CD drives in DOS or DOS mode. You have XP which doesn't use DOS.

In Windows 98, if a drive is not showing up properly or is otherwise misbehaving, one of the first things you try is to go into Device Manager and remove the drive from the listing. Then you reboot and let Windows 98 redetect this. I don't know whether the procedure is the same for Windows XP or not.

I don't know about Windows XP, but in Windows 98 the drives in My Computer are not identified beyond their letter.

If your computer is slow to start up, you can use a utility supplied by Microsoft called BootVis to check which components are loading slowly and isolate the problem.

Search the Microsoft site for bootVis and see if that helps any.