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Do you really need 3 toolbars?
In msconfig disable the following, ehtray, ctdvddet, cthelper, updreg, dvd launcher, realplay, gttask (this is actually Qttask), isuspm, issch, tfswctrl, sprtcmd, mcagent, aawtray, reader_sl, jusched, yahoo messenger.
What I gather from these entries, your are running Windows Media Center (not plain jane XP), you have a creative labs sound card, your running Mcafee antivirus, seeing that, the first thing I would do is remove Mcafee.
Do you really need 3 toolbars?
In msconfig disable the following, ehtray, ctdvddet, cthelper, updreg, dvd launcher, realplay, gttask (this is actually Qttask), isuspm, issch, tfswctrl, sprtcmd, mcagent, aawtray, reader_sl, jusched, yahoo messenger.
What I gather from these entries, your are running Windows Media Center (not plain jane XP), you have a creative labs sound card, your running Mcafee antivirus, seeing that, the first thing I would do is remove Mcafee.
Can I just disable 2 toolbars, or uninstall?
Remove McAfee? I was using AVG for a while and there was a conflict with something, I was getting blue screens. With McAfee, so far no blue screens.
Even with those removed he still has 16 items at start up. seems like a lot. I have 3.
What toolbars are they, and what features do you use on them? I am an avid toolbar hater and refuse to have them on my browser. Anything that can be done with one can be done elsewhere without the garbage that comes along with them.
Remove them and see what happens with the speed of the browser. If it doesn't make any difference put them back on. It's your system.
Probably the most telling indicator so far is that hard drive light. Add more RAM. When you run a computer all (well, most) activity is in RAM. In general, every time you load a program it loads into RAM. Every time you change a web page it's done in RAM. If I recall correctly you have 1GB in your system. Sounds like a lot. Not. Not if that hard drive light is lit up all the time.
Here's what happens:
You open Windows and all those programs in start up load, in RAM. They all leave traces there, using bits and pieces. Not always a lot, but using some. You open your email and check it, leaving it open in the background so it will download new messages. Next is a browser, perhaps an IM, perhaps a utility. All these use RAM.
When all your RAM is used the system switches to hard drive and uses a portion of it as RAM. Since access to RAM is so much faster than access to the drive your system goes into a state of molasses. When you see that hard drive light on all the time your computer is running slow RAM is full and this will only change if one of two things happen.
1. You reduce the amount of RAM used by unwanted or unnecessary programs (those items NHDave wants you to remove [do so] from start up and the toolbars I hate are two examples), or leaving fewer programs open when you run the PC (close the email program when browsing, etc).
2. Add RAM.
Adding RAM is the simplest, but it doesn't address the real problem, which is all the junk we end up with on our computers that isn't really necessary to it's operation.
I know you don't use your computer exactly as I have in this example, but you get the idea.
A great place to research unnecessary programs in startup:
Place a dot in the radio button for Diagnostic Startup, Click OK and restart. See any difference in boot to Windows-ready speed, browsing, etc? If yes then you should look deeper into how much is running at startup.
Remember to set it back to Normal startup.
In the startup tab of msconfig you should note that the check marks can be replaced so the "turn this off" is a toggle. This is one of the ways I test the need of a program that runs at startup. Turn off the program by removing the check mark, reboot, run for a while and see if something is broke. If not, leave it off, if something stops working right, turn it back on. A note: Only do this with one item at a time. Turning off more than one tells you nothing because you don't know which one is causing a problem.
The list that NHDave gave you is exempt from this testing. Just turn them off, you don't need them.
Remove McAfee? I was using AVG for a while and there was a conflict with something, I was getting blue screens. With McAfee, so far no blue screens.
Maybe not, but it's widely known to cause no end of problems you wouldn't think are related to it, same as the older versions of Norton, it's up to you, but if i was working on your system it would be the first thing to go.
Maybe not, but it's widely known to cause no end of problems you wouldn't think are related to it, same as the older versions of Norton, it's up to you, but if i was working on your system it would be the first thing to go.
Then what anti virus to use? If Norton and McAfee suck, AVG was giving me error messages. I had a thread on here I believe.
BTW, The hard drive light doesn't stay on all the time, only when I try to open a new tab, it blinks the time it takes to open.
I'm doing most things suggested but I'm not a computer wiz by no means. I can delete things that don't matter but I have to be careful as if I delete something that's needed and my PC goes haywire, I have no one here to help me. I do appreciate all the help you guys give to everyone. Thank You again from me and everyone else you help!!
I'm not saying you can't reinstall Mcafee, but remove it to determine if it's the problem first.
Unless you know what the other startup items are, you don't just want to go disabling them, I suggested the ones I did because I knew you didn't need them.
taurus430, I see you started this thread on 4/28. Do you have the google toolbar at the top of your IE screen? I've read the three pages here and I'm not clear if you do or do not.
I have the google toolbar and they did some kind of upgrade about the time you started this thread. One new "feature" was when one attempts to open a new tab, google, having kept track of all your past history, goes into its database and retrieves all your history and "favorites" and them puts them up for you to choose from. Which is dumb, if you're not wanting to go back to one of those sites. I suddenly found it took almost a minute to open a new tab while google did its thing. Very frustrating!!! After a lot of searching, I finally found the answer.
If you have the google toolbar look to the far right and the second to the last thing is a blue wrench with a drop down box. Hit the down arrow and from the list pick Options which is preceded by another blue wrench. Should open a Toolbar Options window with the top tab Search open. At the bottom of that window is checked Enable the Google new page tab after the google upgrade. Uncheck this box and then click Save at the bottom of the window. That stops this damned search for your entire history from happening and a new tab just opens right away, just like it used to
BTW, google toolbar came with my new computer experience. I don't know if it came from Dell, the seller, or Verizon FIOS which provides my isp. I suspect Dell, because Verizon also installed its own additional toolbar which I inadvertently removed when McAfee suggested there was some suspicious, cryptically named, mysterious program that was operating on my pc. I followed their advice to remove it and it turned out the Verizon tool bar
taurus430, I see you started this thread on 4/28. Do you have the google toolbar at the top of your IE screen? I've read the three pages here and I'm not clear if you do or do not.
I have the google toolbar and they did some kind of upgrade about the time you started this thread. One new "feature" was when one attempts to open a new tab, google, having kept track of all your past history, goes into its database and retrieves all your history and "favorites" and them puts them up for you to choose from. Which is dumb, if you're not wanting to go back to one of those sites. I suddenly found it took almost a minute to open a new tab while google did its thing. Very frustrating!!! After a lot of searching, I finally found the answer.
If you have the google toolbar look to the far right and the second to the last thing is a blue wrench with a drop down box. Hit the down arrow and from the list pick Options which is preceded by another blue wrench. Should open a Toolbar Options window with the top tab Search open. At the bottom of that window is checked Enable the Google new page tab after the google upgrade. Uncheck this box and then click Save at the bottom of the window. That stops this damned search for your entire history from happening and a new tab just opens right away, just like it used to
BTW, google toolbar came with my new computer experience. I don't know if it came from Dell, the seller, or Verizon FIOS which provides my isp. I suspect Dell, because Verizon also installed its own additional toolbar which I inadvertently removed when McAfee suggested there was some suspicious, cryptically named, mysterious program that was operating on my pc. I followed their advice to remove it and it turned out the Verizon tool bar
Hope this is helpful - Cheers qw
It worked!!!! Thanks. It was only a simple matter of settings with google. What took me 20secs now takes me 3-4 sec.
It worked!!!! Thanks. It was only a simple matter of settings with google. What took me 20secs now takes me 3-4 sec.
Good for you I think this was one of the worst and most over reaching things that google has done. The "upgrade" was done in the background and users (like me and you) suddenly found themselves with this major problem with no warning or notice. When I searched to find out about what was going on, google did not make it easy to find the answer. Glad you have got the problem fixed
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It's your system.
was when one attempts to open a new tab, google, having kept track of all your past history, goes into its database and retrieves all your history and "favorites" and them puts them up for you to choose from. Which is dumb, if you're not wanting to go back to one of those sites. I suddenly found it took almost a minute to open a new tab 
when McAfee suggested there was some suspicious, cryptically named, mysterious program that was operating on my pc. I followed their advice to remove it and it turned out the Verizon tool bar 
