Then...
I noticed that 'Firefox' was taking longer and longer to load - a couple of minutes or longer to get to the home page - worked normally after that. When Mrs. Mikey got on while I was out she thought it was broke and loaded up IE and reset it to default - IE seemed to work fine. So I put it down to a recent automatic upgrade. But then I also noticed that other programs were also taking longer than normal to start.
Mmm - maybe some rogue malware had got in somehow. Ran Ad-Aware, SpyBot Search and Destroy and reran the Norton Antivirus for good measure. Ad-Aware and Spybot found the usual suspects but nothing unusual, nothing from Norton at all!
OK - Windows was complaining about some new downloads and needed windows to reboot so I dutifully rebooted.
Sat back and waited....
Watched the screen and timed how long it would take to fully load - used to take around 4 minutes for everything to load fully.
Now it was taking over 10 minutes!
Had a look at the 'Task Manager' processes. CPDN SAP was taking 596K of resources - that was expected - I couldn't see anything else in there (that's not to say that there was something lurking that I missed) that shouldn't have been there.
So - first principles - what's gone in recently that could cause this dramatic loading slowdown? Obvious now 'cos it's in the title of the post!
Out came 'Speed up my PC'. It wouldn't unload at first! Had to manually shut down the task bar process! (See I told you I didn't see it in the Task manager - but it must have been lurking under an innocuous name!).
Anyway, it unloaded eventually. Another couple of reboots to check timings and everything is back to normal again.
So, the message in the lecture today is...
Just 'cos it's free and from a reputable firm it doesn't mean it works!
In my case:-
'Registry Booster' (paid for) - OK - though minimal difference as far as I can see.
'Speed up my PC' (Free) - don't touch it with yours or anyone elses bargepole!
Rant over - I feel much better for that!
