Slow Performance

I have a laptop running Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 5.5. I accidentally powered off the laptop without properly shutting it down, after which my laptop was extremely slow performing simple tasks such as browsing my local drives and copying text from applications (e.g., Microsoft Word) to Visual Basic (VB). In addition, whenever I started IE, the system presented a dialog box explaining that an unexpected error had occurred, then IE would shut down. I tried reinstalling SP1 and IE and ran Chkdsk, but without success. Not until I used another account to log on to the system did I realize that the problems occurred only when I was logged on under my account. I backed up my personal files and settings, then right-clicked My Computer, selected Properties, and discovered on the User Profiles tab that my original profile was larger than 5MB. I deleted the profile, rebooted, and logged on to my original account. Suddenly, everything was back to normal. I've since had similar difficulties with a few other workstations in my office, and this solution has resolved all the problems.

Discuss this Article 6

Curtis Hays (not verified)
on Jan 17, 2002
We are also having the same problem. Performance issuses all seemed to be related to the network, wether it's through IE, accessing a network drive on a file server, or network printing. It doesn't seem practical to have to recreate profiles once a month. Also we have users that use a software which is installed based on the profile. So if we delete the profile and re-create it, we have to reinstall the software. Anyone have any ideas on what to do, or what might be causing this? Thanks,
Clive (not verified)
on Jul 3, 2001
I have about 30 laptops supporting a group of area mangers Dell Latitude Cxi running Win2000 and IE5.5. Periodically IE5.5 gives an error on load and refuses to run. Also like yourself we discovered the profile trick to solve the problem.

As well as IE freaking out we see another symptom which actually occurs more often. This involved IE/Outlook refusing to print HTML pages. The print job is spooled, initialises the printer but never prints.

Again a new profile is required to solve the problem. I'm currently rebuilding corrupt profiles about 2-3 times a week to resolve the issue. Talking to the Area Managers I can't see what they are doing to cause the problem although it does seem to to related to a sequence of events as some managers get it all the while others don't. - all are running cloned installs.
jim (not verified)
on Nov 17, 2003
Hey! Check out http://www.win2000mag.net/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=27148.

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