My wife's laptop, a few years old now, has become slow and recalcitrant in use. She needs it for work and uses Firefox, Windows, Word and a scanner.
Neither of us is computer literate. But is there some probable cause that can be dealt with easily? I suspect simple weight of documents and emails.
Last time someone else was let loose on it they did improve the speed, but also deleted stuff that shouldn't have been deleted. So we don't want that happening again.
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Almost definitely NOT due to stuff she has stored, more likely just the usual "age" thing where rebuilding from scratch would improve things. Possibly but unlikely it has a virus. I suppose it's possible the disk is nearly full which could prevent it extending it's swap file but this isn't that likely.
Can you find Task Manager and look to see how much load the processor and disk is under, and if heavy, identify the tasks which are working it hard?
If you advise the operating system someone will be along who can advise how to reach that, before I am back online tonight :-) Have a poke around in Control/alt/delete for it.
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I improved the speed of my last desktop by having more memory installed.
Last edited by: L'escargot on Thu 6 Sep 12 at 08:58
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>> I improved the speed of my last desktop by having more memory installed.
That would be more likely to help if it had always been slow.
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You could try the usual first, before you start getting too technical, and whilst your waiting for more knowledgeable folk to get up!
Run Ccleaner - download it if necessary
run Malwarebytes Antimalware - as above
Do a defrag.
If you do this you could rule out a lot of system clutter, malware issues - you will probably be advised to do it later anyway!.
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>> Run Ccleaner - download it if necessary
>> run Malwarebytes Antimalware - as above
>> Do a defrag.
I was also going to suggest Ccleaner: www.piriform.com/CCLEANER
and for the defrag afterwards their Defraggler programme: www.piriform.com/defraggler - both free.
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There's a guide - in easy to follow language - on the moneysavingexpert website, the first post gives a 10 step guide to speeding up a slow PC, it's a little old (2010) but given the age of the OP's machine should be relevent. It does include running CCleaner as others have suggested but have a read and try out some of the steps. The post was written by an IT professional.
tinyurl.com/buj79rz
Jacks
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Easiest was is to check what is starting up everytime, that usually takes a bunch of performance.
If you download a thing called hijackthis.exe and run it it will give you the option to scan and create a log file.
Its available loads of places, this is probably as good as any..
www.filehippo.com/download_hijackthis/199/
If you send that log file to me at the email address you used yesterday I'll go through it for you and see if there are recommendations to make.
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Thanks for recommendations and offers. I will try some of the recommendations this evening when the computer isn't in use.
I have a supplementary question: do all the programs and softwares whose logos are on the desktop start automatically when the computer starts? The scanner in particular is fairly intrusive and a bit troublesome to use sometimes, although it works brilliantly. Adobe uses a lot of bandwidth too.
Doubtless people will be able to tell from this question alone how helpless we are.
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>>do all the programs and softwares whose logos are on the desktop start automatically when the computer starts?
No, there is no consistency. Some do, some don't most you can stop.
The only advantage of the ones that do start automatically is that when you do wish to use them, they're all ready for you.
The downside is that they consume resources. Despite the power of my machine, I start virtually nothing automatically.
Bandwidth is what you have for an internet connection, rather than a computer resource. So "Adobe" uses a lot of bandwidth, would usually only be true when it is updating.
As I say, I suspect that you have far too much autostarting, but that is all fairly easy to put right.
To help; disk space is the amount of space on your disk. This is used for the computer to store stuff, or to put something down temporarily when it is trying to do too much at once. There is a limit to how fast the disk can work, and as to how many things can access it at one time. In reality these two limits are unlikely to be an issue. Total disk space can be an issue, if you have less than 10% available then your machine can slow down.
Memory (or RAM) can simply be understood as how much the ocmputer can think about at one time, before it has to put something down. As you try and run more things at once, then this can use more memory until the machine becomes so busy putting things down and picking them back up that it ends up not doing much.
This can give you a performance issue, but unless you have substantial additional software or a different version of windows to that which the machine came with, I doubt its your issue.
CPU is simply how fast the machine can think. Not likely to be an issue, unless it was always slow or unless you are doing something the machine wasn't designed for - modern games, for example. If it is an issue, then its new machine time.
Computers can slow over time, but generally the problem is either they are trying to do too much at once, or they are full of bits and pieces of garbage left over time.
It is high time computers reached a point where one didn't have to understand them to use them.
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Which "Adobe" is it? - Acrobat reader, writer, flash? - if you don`t use Writer and only use Acrobat reader for viewing PDF files, uninstall them, and install Foxit reader instead, it`s a lot lighter on resources!
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I googled ccleaner and tried to download it, but it asked for a code of some sort and wouldn't give me one. Nor have I yet succeeded in de-installing it.
The piriform version did download in basic free form, as did the piriform defraggler. I tried to run them both, one deleting a lot of what looked like redundant files, but after restarting the device it seemed as slow as ever.
There are two identical lines of buttons at the top of the Firefox opening page that I don't recognise and that include a facebook button. I can't get rid of them either. Perhaps they are the problem. It's a great nuisance.
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You need to find someone that knows what they're doing Sire - it's only a year old for gawds sake!
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>> There are two identical lines of buttons at the top of the Firefox opening page
>> that I don't recognise and that include a facebook button. I can't get rid of
>> them either. Perhaps they are the problem. It's a great nuisance.
>>
Quite probable that toolbars have been installed with free software, such as the piriform crapcleaner. It is also possible that the crap was installed by some malware.
Open ccleaner, go to Tools, then Startup tab, then for each tab there, use the button at the bottom right "save to text file" to save the contents, and then paste those text files here in this thread.
p.s.
1. When you say the laptop runs slow, is that for everything or only for internet browsing?
2.You should have installed the slim version of ccleaner from here:
www.piriform.com/ccleaner/builds
Last edited by: John H on Fri 7 Sep 12 at 15:40
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Is it really only a year old? If so, then there is something wrong, and hijackthis would almost certainly tell us what it is, or at least give a clue.
However, given that you're struggling to download stuff, then I think the suggestion of involving someone who knows what they are doing is the right one.
One of the local IT types ought to be prepared to have a go for about £25.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Fri 7 Sep 12 at 16:05
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>> Is it really only a year old?
>>
I think someone is misinforming us. OP says "a few years old now".
>> One of the local IT types ought to be prepared to have a go for
>> about £25.
>>
he dreads that - see OP "Last time someone else was let loose on it they did improve the speed, but also deleted stuff that shouldn't have been deleted. So we don't want that happening again."
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>>OP says "a few years old now".
In which case, running CCLeaner and similar will clean up temporary files and the like. There are a few things it will speed up but not much and not for long.
Almost certainly the issue is that things are automatically starting up, making startup a long process, and the continuing to run or be on standby in the background, thus consuming resources and slowing the thing down.
I only use two tools for looking at that in the first instance, Spybot which these days has its own issues and HiJackThis which is dead simple, dead small and free.
So either AC needs to download and run this himself, or take the machine to a man who can.
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>> HiJackThis which is dead simple, dead small and free.
>>
AC: get it here
sourceforge.net/projects/hjt/
Apart from any malware issues that you may find for him after running HJT, I suspect he has XP with less than 512MB ram, and a lot of start-up entries such as Adobe he mentioned. He may also have a fairly resource intensive AV running.
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Actually most common is not to find malware, but rather endless pointless and unrequired programs which get installed over a period of time.
Resource intensive AV - You're right, most of them in fact. I use a firewall and Security Essentials on the girls' XP machines with pretty much nothing else. Haven't had a problem.
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Thanks chaps. I will try to grapple with HJT later.
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Somewhat to my surprise, I think I have largely cured my wife's laptop making it less urgent to get a new one.
HiJackThis did make a list of all programs many o which it just dumped when asked. I just hope I haven't done any real damage. But I still needed to go through all the desktop icons I didn't recognise and dump them individually if they seemed unnecessary. Several of them were games-facilitating programs downloaded insouciantly by the nippers. They looked innocent with space requirements of only 4 or 5 Mb, but when deleted using remove/change in the control panel you could see literally hundreds of small files being removed at high speed. I think these programs, completely surplus to my wife's requirements, were the real reason why the thing took forever and then opened everything in three or more copies (for example) owing to user impatience and repeated instructions.
The stupid devic is working almost normally now, much quicker. I just hope I haven't dumped anything she needs. We will see.
I always told her it was a mistake to let the children play with it. I don't let them touch mine. Perhaps she will listen now.
Thanks everyone, notably John H and FM2R, cheeky sod. I will post again if I have screwed up.
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Sounds like you got everything. I'd just recommend two further things;
Run hijackthis again, and check the report it gives you for anyting including the word "update" or similar. If you don't recognise it, then delete it.
Shutdown/restart, run hijackthis again and see if anything has reappeared after you deleted it. Probably not, but it is a strong sign of further issues if it does happen.
Also, if you have teenagers or similar accessing it, you should resign yourself to doing this again periodically. Also, watch out for things like Messenger and the like which slow startup down horribly.
Personally I agree with you (not a phrase I intended using today) and just wouldn't let them play with it at all.
>>cheeky sod.
Pretentious git.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Sat 8 Sep 12 at 19:05
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After deleting so many programmes this is the time to run Ccleaner again and if know how to make a System Restore Point run its Registry cleaner as well - next button down on the Ccleaner menu. Then run the Defraggler programme to put all those scattered files on the hard disk back together.
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>>Is it really only a year old?<<
Sorry, I got that wrong.
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Toshiba laptop has become slow - smokie
