Where to Learn the Detailed Internal Structure of PC Computers

Take one apart.

Seriously.

I would suggest a local college for courses...or just dive in ↓
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuuJ8cGcl30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN7aO81pktU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp4R0zGwZ0s
http://csit.udc.edu/~byu/UDC3529315/Lecture3.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MDzGo-hgq8
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407277,00.asp

once you learn how to pear into the tiny inner workings of your CPU you can inspect your registers......that's where they live.

Both software and hardware detailed internals are long now hidden from the PC user, partly because concidering the complexity of the beast it wouldn't be of much use and that low level access would only (?) make systems less stable and more prone to attacks by the wrong people. Naturally, vunerability to attacks by the right people, is OK. That's the whole idea and the current operating systems (including the open source ones) do just that, so if you want to know what exactly is happening inside your box, you can for example study the source code of a modern open source kernel, something extremely demanding, since they are deliberatelly cryptic, badlly commented, or worse. But don't worry, if you had the skill to do that yourself, you would already be in the French system payroll...(LOL) S.M.

I think you are asking the wrong question in trying to solve your problem. Your PC is very slow. This could be because it is simply an old and slow PC (hardware) or because of the software. Now there are lots of ways of speeding program execution up a slow PC, only some of which you have tried. In addition, there is simply the possibility that you have filled it too full. You have not mentioned what operating system you are using, but Windows, in all its flavours, requires a lot of empty space in the hard drive in order to run properly. This is because it treats some of the hard drive as RAM during program execution.
The next point to make is that an attempt to understand the internal structure of the CPU registers is not going to help you in the slightest. If you were intending to inspect these registers it would be because you were intending to write some code at the assembly language level to improve the Windows operating system. With respect, that is not going to happen. By all means have a go - the latest version of the MASM assembler is at http://www.masm32.com.

I could not agree more on the suggestions. It is true to just clean out unnecessary "stuff",i.e old and unwanted files and useless programs.

It is highly unlikely to be the motherboard registers, if there is a physical problem here it could be the hard drive.

Try performing a check of the hard drive (plenty of free programs on the internet), alternatively format the hard drive and reinstall the software (it is likely a corrupt software issue) or replace the hard drive (or computer) completely.

The problems you mention, does have nothing to do with the hardware but more to do with a shoddy OS, learning the innards is good, but it will not stop this from happening again (unless you unplug the internet cable and turn off Wifi).

Hardware advances & changes frequently. Unless it is your profession to KNOW cutting edge PC hardware, the time investment may not be practical.

I think your problem is mostly due to the Windoze OS and hard drive clutter. You can follow the masses and spend time cleaning the drive and optimizing/fixing Windoze, or...

... you could try one of the many free Live CD Linux distributions like Mint, Ubuntu, etc.

I switched in 2008 and 99.8% of my software headaches went away. No more crashes, lockups, BSODs, viruses, or other malware. Did have a couple hardware failures, but Linux restarted just fine after the repairs. Seriously doubt Windoze would have done that without a re-licensing headache.

In general, Linux distros require far less hardware to run faster than Windoze. If your hardware is a bit weak or outdated, then you may be surprised at how WELL Linux runs. Windoze is huge resource pig while Linux runs nicely on an old 2.2GHz P4, 1GB RAM, 40GB HDD.

Be patient, a full OS boot from a CD/DVD is slow. After successful CD boot you can "test drive" Linux with access to all of the files on your hard drive. If you like what you see and want to keep Linux, it WILL boot/run MUCH faster after installation to a hard drive. If you don't like what you see or still want/need to go back to Windoze, shutdown Linux and remove the CD. Restart into Windoze as normal.

There are many good open source applications that should provide all the functionality you need. The OpenOffice/LibreOffice suite is an excellent substitute for most office tasks. Linux email and browser applications are (IMO) more robust and stable than their Windoze equivalents. Also, the Linux "command line" can be a very powerful tool for many tasks, including probing the hardware for information you may want.

There are some Windoze programs that just don't have good open source equivalents. In that case you have the option to dual boot into Linux or Windoze. Another option is to attempt to run the few Windoze programs you need under WINE or a in a VM.

Even if you decide Linux is not for you, keep the live CD handy for emergency file backup and AV/malware cleanup. Good luck whichever path you choose.

Not sure what you are working with however the more antivirus and other OS scanning software packages you add, the slower the machine will become.

The processor requires a lot of memory registers to simply provide control of the machine functions such as drive control, prefetch, fetch, read, write, and interrupt request servicing.

Adding memory intensive software that extracts a section of DATA, examines it for corrupt characteristics, and if it is ok, then allows it's use, requires even more memory registers and interrupt time usage.

The more advanced the software the more intense the memory register usage is and the greater the margin for registry writing error becomes.

In addition to the above a great deal of the newer software packages are 64 bit and when loaded on a 32 bit machine, the machine comes to a grinding halt. (Accessing the internet exposes the machine to this dilema.)

Shutting the machine off (powering down) when it "locks up" and rebooting it further adds to the vulnerability issues as the execution of the register write function is interrupted and in most cases the write is incomplete thereby causing executable instructions to be corrupt.

Knowing the internal physical workings in detail of a PC will not necessarily help in "fixing" the problem however knowing how an instruction is processed and the difference in the bit table size as it applies to processing instructions will open a "whole new world" of understanding.

Be careful when combining multiple software scanning and repair packages from different vendors as many software packages see files from other sources as a "virus" and as a threat to your machine.

Although there may be nothing actually wrong with the identified file(s) the monitoring software usually prompts the user to "Delete all files?" and offers the option to review and delete each file one at a time so that the user can avoid deleting viable, critical operating files.

Opting to delete all files without review and/or not knowing which files are critical can in many cases render the machine partially inoperable and in some cases destroy the operating system (OS) entirely.

Let us correct a certain inaccuracy here:

In addition to the above a great deal of the newer software packages are 64 bit and when loaded on a 32 bit machine, the machine comes to a grinding halt.

A 64-bit program will not even begin to run on a 32 bit machine, just as 16-bit programs never could run on an 8-bit machine, so that is never going to be a cause of the machine slowing down. In fact the operating system has to be part of the discussion. A 32-bit OS will run on a 64-bit machine (as have been available since 2003) but a 64-bit OS, like any other program, will not run on a 32-bit machine. Following on, a 64-bit program will not run within a 32-bit OS, even on a 64-bit machine.

We have been through multiple causes of slow computing, but the wrong bit-width is not one of them.

Firstly, I believe malware is usually the cause for very noticeable computer slowdown. Just because you can't find it doesn't mean it is not there. Please note, there are malware routines that allow malware to bore through a firewall and fill the hole with an IP tunnel (VPN). Most botnets use VPN to connect back its master. The VPN will bypass even a great a firewall that displays in and out flow. Hacking is on the rise so you need to become educated if you plan to use the internet.

You approach is near worthless! It is like studying anatomy to learn how to prevent and/or cure an infection. You need to study pathogens. Learn how they attack. Not even knowing what kind of computer you have other than it is a PC, I can tell you why panda cloud cleaner found so many pathogens. You have/had a root kit malware http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit. It loads before your AV software and disables it. It runs but does not find anything. Panda found the root kit and destroyed it allowing your other AV to function then it found all those other viruses. It is extremely likely you did not find everything. If you want to reuse that computer, I would do these things to have a clean computer and reduce your chances of getting re-infected.

Buy an new C: drive. Isolate your computer from the outside until your shields are up.

Install your OS on your new drive

Get either Comodo or zonealarm firewalls from a clean computer. I would also down load Western Digital Acronis software if your drive is WD or if it is Seagate get Diskwizard. If you are going free Comodo has a better free version.

Make sure your firewall is up and running before you connect. I would also image your pristine C: drive before you connect.

Before you connect I would make an image of C: with the free imaging software I mentioned.

Connect to the internet

You can download AV. I would research before you make a choice. Neither of your security package are in the top 10 AV packages. I would be careful running 2 AV in parrallel. I do but I am using one in compatibility mode. It 'knows' there is another AV package running.

If your firewall is set to warn of an intruder, I will suspect you will get incoming within the first second you connect with the network. I now start up with my communications ports in stealth mode so I don't see those messages anymore. I prefer to let the bot-net think the computer is no longer used. Your AV scanners will only find old malware at best. Just last night I discovered malware that was undectable 9 months ago on my old C:.

By the way, last Dec there was an article posted that stated 80 hand-picked malwares were tested against the 4 most popular AV systems. There were 0 detections. The tested malware all had the ability to mutate so each infection had a different signature. This mutation routine has been available for over a year. That type of malware was rare in Dec it is likely common now. We really do not know. How do you quantify something that is undetectable?

I would also check out the blogs at unmask parasites. This is one of the most up to date source for web attacks. That and installing free software are the two most common ways to get infected. You can't surf for 2 hours without coming to an infected page. They are everywhere I have been attacked on a Microsoft site. I figure a site like that would always be safe NOT. I learned the site was fragmented with over a half dozen companies controlling parts of the page.

I browse inside a Sandboxie sandbox so I know when I am attacked. Sandboxie warns the user when the sandbox is attacked.

The large scale network admins feel no site is 100% safe and the best cure for malware is a full reimage of C: drive. They advise scanning with one other scanner. If you find malware and after that your computer runs fine you can move on. Otherwise re-image.

Just a little more solid info on volume of the threat from Panda and Mcafee...

More Than Six Million New Malware Samples Were Created in Q2 2012, According to PandaLabs Three out of every four malware infections are caused by Trojans; new variant of Police Virus emerges - See more at: http://press.pandasecurity.com/usa/news/more-than-six-million-new-malware-samples-were-created-in-q2-2012-according-to-pandalabs.

Thumb drive and password-stealing malware showed significant growth in Q2. At nearly 1.2 million new samples, the AutoRun worm spreads from thumb drives by executing code embedded in AutoRun files, repeating the process on any and all drives discovered. Password-stealing malware, at nearly 1.6 million new samples, collects account names and passwords, so an attacker can pose as the victim.

http://www.mcafee.com/us/about/news/2012/q3/20120904-01.aspx

The AV companies are getting overwhelmed with the volume of malware they did find. It is time to bone up on the enemy.

blaw blaw blaw blaw blaaw blaw

If your CPU is on the list contained at this site, then you may be in luck.

Stepping through microcode can be fun, but relating that back through the software layers will also require source code, register step programming, logic gate analysis, etc.

Rarely (if ever) will you find someone performing chip-and-pin analysis on any modern computer system. (By modern, I mean anything past around 1990.)

When is the last time you saw a technician converting octal to decimal or hex to decimal, then look up the microcode to track down a register? Even then, the tens-of-thousands of registers (machine coded) are all on the CPU. 4K microcode used to take up about 5 large volumes...

We don't even get error register LED's anymore!

re blah: i haven't been busy with such for decades now - couple of stuff (donno about modrnity) ACPI 1.0 and PC98/99 Compliant SuperI/O (nov '98) PC97551 Embedded Controller for Noetbook Systems (feb.'06) - you have to order a PCB layout design for and that gonna be costly (i gess)

no matter how good're the chips - it takes an idiot programmer to make it all worthless :: "Application popup: AcroRd32.exe - Application Error : The instruction at "0x7c911766" referenced memory at "0x642e686b". The memory could not be "read"." -- it takes 30y for micros oft not to be able to describe the word "memory"

I am one of those idiot programmers. It has been my experiance that all the programmers I know are actually very smart.

Ci139, I think you are correct in that Anitoff is well over his head. The Z80 and CPM was so simple an intelligent person could understand the working. Now both are well beyond human comprehension. Programmers can follow a thread and fix a bug and should understand the thread he or she is working on but can ignore the other billion threads.

The physical computer and the OS of a Zylog80 based computer is a 'stone aged device compared with even a smart phone let alone a real computer. The PC is interrupt driven vs hardwired making it much more complex. If you just consider the CPU of a quad core is probably more than a million times as complex as the Z80. The Z80 silicon chip was only a few square millimeters in size, versus a massive quad code of square inches in size. One version of the Z80 allowed you to see the actual chip inside the component that was much bigger so it could plug into the printed circuit. The quad core has no unused space.The components of a quad core are 3 orders of magnitude smaller, nanometers vs microns and there are many layers of components vs 1 layer. The different CPM OSs all fit on a 160,000 byte disk with most of the space left over vs Win 7 that requires a DVD even for the 64 bit OS. In case you do not know, 64 bit code is greatly compressed because the 64 bit has vastly more words/instruction set. My guess is theWin 7 is about a billion times more complex than CPM. I bet if you printed out the source code the stack would be over 100 yards high and probably hundreds of yards high. Anyone that thinks they can grasp something as complex as that with crystal clear clarity is delusional. That is what you would have to do to figure out why something does not work.

The reality is the answer is not in the code. Malware has short-circuited some of the normal processes. The reason your computer slowed down is most of the power of your computer has been diverted to perform illegal tasks. Each bot net only takes a small amount of CPU time so it will not draw attention. By the time you wised up there may have been dozens of bot-nets doing God knows what sapping all you computer's power.

bulls' it was known since Win95 that the sys optimizer optimizes your sys so the institution full of geniuses can't tell what's coing on ...

... so we regularly made a "clean install" after every 6 month or so - now with SP3 and too many data unsorted on my win partitions - i just don't wanna do this (takes several days to confirm nothing that shouldn't will be deleted permanently)

otherwise i agree that the modern hardware may utilize heuristic "probability based/backed" algorithms that are "fuzzy to track" and you never can tell when they can't do what they intended for eighter efficiently or if at all

i can really put it that way if the code was optimized at machine code level - how much faster and compact the windows where ????

no-one knows ? yes - it's because they just don't do such anymore

as in fact - my PC running just fine after i dumped a lot of apps out of it including JAVA (the flash and new acrobat should go aswell only if the folkus in internet posted their stuff in some other form)

- it's unless i happen to use some Google's services
or browse images with Win-Pic&Fax-Vwr
or watch some HQ movies (some Win Update managed to make much of codecs not functioning correctly - there wasnot AV insync before - now only mp4-s and couple of others operate properly)

i gess it's just the same as with pocket calculators (where the PVC connector just "automatically" disconnects - can be "reconnected with" ??? 150-200°C mild wipe-over) - the pre-installed (i suppose intentionally) "failure" - so you'd buy a new 1

the XP came out too good - so you needed a "critical update" ((g.d. jerks))

- i have some old PC documentation somewhere - along shut with my own sys concepts - not really busy with at this time - but they're scheduled - will see

you know i always thought that "the big guys" (at µ$) do their job - never hope someone else will do your stuff ... now i'm badly out of schedule

the plan is very simple::

1) build a self learning & organizing generic dynamical data structure (AI)

2) provide it with all necessary docs -- should program a text/image recognition module

3) it will work out from there (i can't estimate the required storage size growth -- even the 8088 could've done it for starting -- the limit is storage size + access time)

? sounds impossible -- think again

i donno why at the time i didn't came futher that - gess there was a lot more interesting stuff around

program xtd_test;

type P_Abstr= ^T_Abstr;
T_Abstr= object {thats somewhat like a .DLL}
end; {the point here is that it compiles}
P_Data= ^T_Data; {untested is run time creation of voluntary objects - from a guide-src}
T_Data= object
idef: byte;
value: P_Abstr;
prev,
next: P_Data;
end;
P_Base= ^T_Base;
T_Base= object
X_Field: P_Base;
X_Data: P_Data;
constructor init;
destructor done;virtual;
end;

constructor T_Base.Init;begin end;
destructor T_Base.Done;begin end;
var cmd: char;
begin
repeat
readln(cmd);
case cmd of
#$30:;
#$31:
end
until cmd=#27

end.

and that was long ago

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130806/ncomms3256/full/ncomms3256.html

with a news like that you never know how many centuries it takes to get into market

This thread keeps finding new life...

Start with a new disk and a good clean load with your bare minimums...

If you are using windows, install Microsoft Steady-State. Now, everytime you reboot you have the clean install ready to go.

PC Tools Registry Mechanic -- (this is a joke ? again ? isn't it "i ♥ BOLD" -- clicking the |B|-button has no effect in this reply editor) . . . so the 1-st 2 points (see link) in the feature list mey be of importance + the 2-nd from botom (as if networking takes aditional resource + nothing more)

the c(wow!, no-bold!, the effect's effective Xp)loud pandas track specific type of malware - ??? by removing these the Registry entries (B4 associated with) B-come "unused" -- i gess it goes like that -- i donno

/// unverified :: if we examine the / Console Root / Component services (Win XP)

we may notice that this system is at mid dev. stage (such process lists are practical for debugging - them all linked to "Computer" same hierarchy level hints that the programmers (multiple) still didn't know where these things should go exactly)

//// by examining software system you may gess the structure (or a missing such)

as for hardware requires getting acquaintant with a lot of chips on your "MB" and the theory behind 'em (try to find a complete video card specs - - - i guess it's easier to manufacture 1 yourself)