First particulars..
Windows XP Pro OS
Use Firefox exclusively
Spy-Bot Search and Destroy and TeaTimer
Zone Alarm Firewall
Reg-cure
AVG Free 7.5
Hard disc is 60% full

I have used the AVG Free for over a year and have been happy with its performance. Recently it began to ask my to re-boot after updating. No biggie, just thought it was something new. everything was normal after a re-boot. But around the 15th of this month when I woke my computer up from hibernate it was as if it had filled with glue. AVG was on and wanted me to re-boot for the update, but if I went to the Start button it just sat there. After maybe a minute the start menu would appear. I managed to re-boot and get the update but the slowness was still there. I performed a disc cleanup which took about an hour! There was barely anything there! I set it to defrag and went to work. When I returned 10 hours later it had defragged 1%! Hmmm. Any action takes a ridiculous amount of time to perform, to the point of rendering the computer useless. After a reboot I also get the "Zone Alarm is initializing" pop-up SEVERAL times before it actually will, if ever.

So, in attempt to track my issue I started turning stuff off. I uninstalled AVG and my computer was back to normal. So I did another disc cleanup, defrag, ran all my spy ware, went through and removed several programs that I did not use, re-booted and reinstalled AVG Free. Whoomp! Same old slow down. I don't just mean slow, I mean absolutely useless. So I uninstalled again(computer went back to normal speed), went to my program files and deleted ALL AVG folders and files, cleaned hard disc again, did a chkdsc and ran the Windows Memory Diag, nuthin. So I did another clean install of AVG and Whooomp!, molasses. So now the computer sits with no anti-virus and disconnected from the net and runs beautifully.

Anybody have any clues or advice? I searched and tried all the solutions that I found here that were for similar problems, none have worked.

Thanks in advance for your time.

You might try installing AVG and disable all AVG processes (boot scanner, resident shield, etc). If your computer runs OK, you can then enable each AVG process one-at-a-time to see if you can identify which one is causing the problem.

You might also try booting into Safe Mode and see if you get the same problem. If not, there might be a conflict between AVG and another process that you have configured to start up (another security progrm?) during normal bootup. See this:

http://www.hosenose.com/support/safemode.asp

Well. if I start the computer with AVG installed it literally takes forever to get to the control center, at many times it will not respond at all. So eliminating processes becomes an all day ordeal just to get there. Inevitably I have to use msconfig and wait for an eternity for it to show up, disable AVG then uninstall it.

Perhaps I will try to install AVG while in safe mode.

I have used msconfig to turn things off to determine what is causing the slow-down, it is AVG itself that is doing it. I'm stumped.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Try to uninstall and install AVG in safe mode.

Since windows installer service isn't running in safe mode, you'll need a reghack:

Open notepad.
Copy and paste the text inside the Code Box below into Notepad
Choose File > Save As and under "Save as type", choose "All Files".
Type fix.reg in the File name and save it to your desktop.

Make sure there are NO blank lines before REGEDIT4
Make sure there IS one blank line at the end of the file.

Close notepad. Make sure that all windows are closed.

Find the fix.reg file on your desktop.
Double click it.
It will then ask if you want the file merged to your registry.
Answer Yes.

_________________
Member of UNITE and ASAP since 2006

Really strange, not aware of similar problems. Have you tried also to check which process in particular takes all the CPU? I.e. open up a Task Manager and look at all processes.... should reveal the one that uses most.
Also, I do not know Reg-cure, is that something that has on-access filtering/blocking features?

Regcure is more of a maintenance program:

http://www.regcure.com/

_________________
Member of UNITE and ASAP since 2006

Welp, Angelfire777, I tried your suggestion. AVG would not let me install in safe mode. My task manager in normal mode with AVG uninstalled and Zone Alarm firewall turmed off shows the vsmon.exe eating up about 28k, on of 4 svshost.exe eating around 20k and explorer .exe eating around 20k. I uninstalled ZA and the vsmon went away. Thinking I may try re-intalling AVG without ZA to see if some sort of conflict developed between the two. If the computer runs normally after this then I will try a re-install of ZA. This is where I am at so please advise if there is a better tact.

Thanks for all ya'll's help so far.

Hmmmm, now here's a weird one for ya.

I uninstalled ZA Firewall then with the Task Manager open I re-installed AVG to see if I could pinpoint the moment it chugs. AVG installed quickly but as soon as it turned on the same old massive slow down, BUT no huge memory usage is noted anywhere and the CPU is bouncing between 4 and 10%. Task Manager does not show anything odd. Now who can explain that? I can't.

It's always the simple things with these beasties, ain' t it.

I think I fixed my problem, so far all is good.

I decided to run another chkdsk and this time I turned up some "file record segment unreadable" messages. So I ran a "chkdisk:c/f" and it repaired what was corrupted and no bad sectors showed up. After I rebooted all was back to normal, faster than normal even. Hopefully this fixed it and hopefully anyone else that has a similar problem can get some use out of this thread.

Thanks for all of your suggestions.

Well, that was unexpected.

Thanks for sharing Evilfirbolg.

_________________
Member of UNITE and ASAP since 2006

I had the same prob a few days ago and it worked for me.
I think you meant to type"chkdsk:c/f" instead of "chkdisk:c/f".

A C&P from another site:

Typing chkdsk c: /f will only fix errors that are encountered, while typing chkdsk c: /f /r will both fix errors and recover lost data. Running chkdsk with both the /f and /r options can often take a considerable amount of time—depending upon the size of your hard drive and the amount of data stored on it. For example, a 60GB hard drive with half the drive filled with data will take about an hour and fifteeen minutes when you use both the /f and /r options. Be prepared to take a long lunch because waiting for chkdsk to finish is somewhat akin to watching paint dry.

While running chkdsk with only the /f option is faster, it will only fix errors, not recover any lost data. However, using only the /f option on a similar 60GB hard drive with half the drive filled with data will only take about twenty minutes.

scroffa...