need help (????)

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ok I really need help here…
I really love to play games on my XP and I have a collection of them. One day, I put on my XP on and I waited for all the “reminders” to come up. I exit those and i start playing and putting games in my XP, but I figured out that whenever I put my games in and wait for it to load… it takes about 2 min. and whenever i install a game… it goes very very slow and really bothers me because of how slow it goes. One of my freinds said that I have a boot sector virus and he also said that they are hard to remove. I read the Dummies books and I cant really find a good explanation of how to get them off. i would love to see answers to this question. Oh wait.. did i hear right from my friend? thank you for your time

also what is Version/Service Release???

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Welcome to the lounge.

It’s difficult to know whether you have a virus from the information you have given us.

Do you have an internet connection?
Do you run any anti-virus software?
Do you run any anti-adware software?

Let us know what tools you are running and we may be able to come up with helpful suggestions.

The best place to ask about these things is our Spyware – AntiVirus – Safe Computing forum, so I will move this post there to continue the discussion.

StuartR

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thank you for your help StuartR… these are the programs that protect me on my cpu…
1. Windows:
Firewall
2. Ad-Aware
3. Microsoft Antispyware
4. Zone Alarm
5. Automatic Updates
6. McAfee
7. Winpatrol
and YES I do have internet connections and my provider is Verizon online DSL
and I use Mozilla Firefox for web navigation.

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Boot sector viruses aren’t very common, new ones don’t come out every 5 minutes. Therefore, if you have one, McAfee Virusscan should find it. The only obvious exception would be if you had a “rootkit” installed, which can cause the operating system to return false information to the virus scanner. The folks at SysInternals have put out a little scanner that conducts a very slow analysis of your computer to try to discover whether you have a rootkit installed. Note that you shouldn’t do other things on your computer while running that scan, or you may get a false positive.

Sysinternals Freeware – RootkitRevealer

If that comes up clean, and other virus scanners also don’t find a boot sector virus, you probably don’t have one.

The next logical step would be to upgrade your firewall to one that gives you better control over outbound communications, such as ZoneAlarm (or, if you have $$ to spend, ZomeAlarm Pro or Outpost Firewall Pro).

Added: If it turns out that your computer is just generally slowing down from old age and/or too many programs running that don’t need to be running, check out our Windows XP board for tips on getting it tuned up.

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I have to ask, along with Stuart and Jefferson, what makes someone think you have a virus at all, let alone a boot sector virus? If it’s just because your computer is “running slowly” a virus may not be the problem at all. You may just have BLOAT! So, now tell us some more about your computer – i.e. how old, processor, how much RAM, etc. (anything you can think of will help). You mentioned something about “reminders” and that sounds like you may be in my boat, i.e. a new computer with a lot of vendor added junk, some of which needs to be removed. The more you can tell us, the more someone is likely to be able to come up with suggestions.

And of course, the bottom line is, if you’re a gamer, you may eventually suffer from slowdown if you don’t have a hi-tech computer especially tooled up for gaming. The hi-speed, video and other requirements of game playing is hard on most (average) computers.

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First of all thank you for all of this help and support from Jefferson and
Big Al. My CPU started this when I got my internet service.
I will now list the “things” [ processor and those RAM stuff] to you.

1. My CPU [ XP] is about a year old.
2. It has a 2.20 GHz Intel Celeron Processor.
3. A 40 GB Hard Drive Ultra ATA/100.
4. A 3D Intel Extreme Graphics 3D.
5. A CD-RW 48xMax Write.
6. 256MB DDR for Optimal Performance.
7. Certified USB Ports[ 5 all]

That is mostly all i found about my CPU and I hope you guys find a precice solution to my problem…. and I am going to download the item that Jefferson suggested. [ Big Al… the reminders are almost like expirations for my virus protection and to update them…. mostly like tips]

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Hi Joe

Ok, we need a little more information first, because I think we’re heading at this from the wrong direction. You say when you install a game it goes “very very slow”. Do you mean the install is slow, or when you actually come to play the game, it’s jerky and slow?

What sort of games are you trying to play? (3D? 2D? old? new?) Can you give us some titles? I think the issue may be that you have Intel Extreme integrated graphics. This chipset really isn’t suited for games and may well be the cause of the symptoms you describe.

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Thank you,yet again, from a supporter Lyra J.

Lyra J said: Ok, we need a little more information first, because I think we’re heading at this from the wrong direction. You say when you install a game it goes “very very slow”. Do you mean the install is slow, or when you actually come to play the game, it’s jerky and slow?

What sort of games are you trying to play? (3D? 2D? old? new?) Can you give us some titles? I think the issue may be that you have Intel Extreme integrated graphics. This chipset really isn’t suited for games and may well be the cause of the symptoms you describe.
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both happens… meaning like the install is slow and yet again the game is also slow. Games that I play are mostly all around games (3D, 2D, old,and new). I’ve also noticed that it happened [started] when i got my internet service.

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