Windows 7 and PC slowdown needs maintanance

Not sure if this is the right spot for this.

System-- Hardware and Software has been slow showing a lot of long throbber
indicated loads.

Spybot Search and Destroy is finding a lot of add stuff like Ad dot Fraud dot Win32.Fraud dot

Are these just cookies or how can I find them all?

I've considered just doing a reinstall to clean house.

After Spybot scan which is going slowly as well I'll run Malwarebytes free version.

On other days I tried restores and such but not solving the slowdown.

The motherboard is purchased new but not real recent AM3+ MSI. Processor is a used Phenom II x4.
Memory should be adequate and I ran MS memtest on that.

Any other tips aside from reinstalling to a freshly low levelled drive?

You have Win 7 ultimate 64 installed with only 2G of memory.
With 4G of memory or less you should install Win 7 32.
Only use Win 7 64 with more than 4G of memory.

- Run disk cleanup (%windir%\system32\cleanmgr.exe)
- Clean it up using CCleaner - https://download.ccleaner.com/ccsetup545.exe

On options - Monitoring - unmark everything.
Analyze - Run cleaner


Windows collect a lot of trash over the years so I do a fresh install every two years. There is always a performance gain.

Thanks for answering. I've made some progress.

As you said, Ran Disk Cleanup in System tools
Ran Defrag from System tools
Ran Malwarebytes but more on that below.
Ran Hijack this and deleted all the file not found items
Ran Spybot Search and Destroy.

These are the usual things I think of right away.

However I did find a new suite of recommended tools here:

Remove the WhiteClick or the White Click Toolbar

That link has more than just White Click and contains their guide of current cleaner tools. It contains technique have not used in Malwarebytes previously.

I see some improvement with just the tools mentioned above.

Will report back on my progress.

The disk cleanup extended is interesting, but this warning appeared in related links:


FYI: Extended Disc Cleanup has started killing recent Windows Updates - Windows 7 Help Forums


For now rather than making batch files and whatnot which I've forgotten long ago I'll just
continue with the guide mentioned above. It won't be immediate but I'll report back.

No chance to work on it today but the few steps I started with made improvements.

Just to add something for (I think it was Hitman Pro) which was recommended by

Bleeping computer (BC is a trusted source for me with no association with them.) I seem
to recall in HitmanPro that since it displays the problem areas you as the user can go in and fix
before such thing as a purchase. I will try to clarify that.

Major Geeks, another trusted source, has a guide that also steers the user off of
such things as Cleaners. They can be used to scan only but this is not expert advice.
The problem with activating cleaners is that they may identify newer upgrades as
not belonging in the program.

I've gotten a lot of help from Seven and Ten forums. Will keep the discussion going as I progress or fail.

I'm making notes as I go based on past experience.
The Bleeping guide is for a a specific malware. I am using it to find out what new program
technique and software is available since the last need to do a cleaning of a working PC.


This is a note about Bleeping saying early on to use Windows Uninstall program.
I've used RevoUninstaller since I've known about it. it is free and has many features for this task.
It is already in my toolkit so I'm adding the info here.


Download Revo Uninstaller Freeware - Free and Full Download - Uninstall software, remove programs, solve uninstall problems




With Revo or any other uninstaller routine, if you see things that aren't familiar in the
file list look at them very carefully but they are for likely deletion in the Revo routine as well.

Reading through I'm on the instructions for Malwarebytes and looking for Rootkits.


TDS Killer is another program I've found which runs quickly and checks for things:


Utilities
.