Is Defender the problem?

My Pavilion Vista laptop has been running slower and slower. Especially while on the web. Pages take forever to come up. Even program files or the All Programs menu. I have tried disabling Windows Defender thinking it might be scanning everything. Is this a possibility? Thanks.

febsr wrote:
I have had problems with defender so it might be. Did you disable it?
What anti spyware software do you use? Web speed could be due to a
number of things but spyware is one.

"febsr" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:90d4bda28c3b5745757dc52277041fa2@xxxxxx-gateway.com... It sounds like you have some kind of malware running on the computer that's
slowing it down.

I use AVG and Adaware regularly. And I run disk cleanup almost daily. I have noticed a small difference since disabling Defender, but not much. I've tried to eliminate the most obvious causes, but still this Vista unit runs much slower than any previous OS I've used. Way too many services are running but eliminating any which seemed unnecessary caused problems and I had to restore them. Any suggestions?

"febsr" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:c1d676789fc84252eb07ca9318920e47@xxxxxx-gateway.com... http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...ta&btnG=Search

Each one of the solutions you mentioned above can miss an exploit.

<http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Hidden_Backdoors_Trojan_Horses_and_Rootkit_Tools_in_a_Windows_Environment.html>

use Currports as Active Ports doesn't run on Vista.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s...s/default.aspx

What do you suggest I use to scan? I haven't found any program that finds and removes rootkits.

"febsr" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:8b6ffd275e4b1421d40d0c2f426c759e@xxxxxx-gateway.com... I am not saying you have to do anything, but you at least have to go look
for yourself with the proper tools and how to detect something on your own
without having some program do it for you, which the "hidden backdoor link
shows you how".

<http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/25e27bed-b251-4af4-b30a-c2a2a93a80d9.aspx>

I will say that you need to learn how to reply post. I will suggest that to
you.

Sorry for any confusion. I was asking for suggestions. I am just a grandmother who is trying to keep my computers running smoothly. I do need to rely on programs because my technical background is limited. I don't know how to reply to a post as I don't post very much. If there are some guidelines I'd be glad to read them. Thank you for your help.

When you run Vista - you really need to be sure you have the hardware to
match the horsepower it takes to make it work. Vista is very sensitive to
misconfiguration, driver problems, correct hardware configuration - much
more so than XP, XP-Pro or any of the 2K family.

Just how often do you clear your IE history and logs?


"febsr" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:90d4bda28c3b5745757dc52277041fa2@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

I regularly clean them out about once a week. Disabling windows defender helped some, but programs have begun hanging. I have 2gb ram which seemed fine at first. Nothing obvious has changed except for the slowed down performance.