Painfully slow laptop?
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Painfully slow laptop?
Been sorting out a neigbours new desktop this week,1.8 gig intel CPU,running XP ,its working fine a lot faster then his old kit, had a bit potter about with his sons Laptop,also a 1.8 gig CPU running XP but it seems to be running at a tenth of the speed of the desktop,I mean its painfully slow at doing anything,could there be any particular reason for this?,only thing I could recommend was defragging the disk which has never been done but I suspect its more than just a cluttered hard disk,any ideas what could be causing this?
Could be many things. Depends largely what sort of user his son is. Typically, the number of items in "startup" under "msconfig" I've found to be a likely culprit; teens often download and install humungous numbers of programs, the other very likely culprit is spyware/adware and trojan-type nasties. If this is the case, doesn't matter how much the disk is defragged, won't make much difference. A good cleanup is probably indicated.
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[quote=had a bit potter about with his sons Laptop,also a 1.8 gig CPU running XP but it seems to be running at a tenth of the speed of the desktop, any ideas what could be causing this?
[/quote]
Try downloading CCleaner from www.ccleaner.com It's very safe and the only thing to remember is that it will wipe all of your passwords and you will have to enter them next time that you use a web page. Have you got them written down?
For a defragger try a free trial from www.diskeeper.com
Then find a Free Registry cleaner and run that.
[/quote]Try downloading CCleaner from www.ccleaner.com It's very safe and the only thing to remember is that it will wipe all of your passwords and you will have to enter them next time that you use a web page. Have you got them written down?
For a defragger try a free trial from www.diskeeper.com
Then find a Free Registry cleaner and run that.
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What markjoy said, plus have a look to see how much available space there is on the HD - if it's a painfully small %age then time to get rid of all .tmp .chk and other clutter.
CCleaner...excellent. Has it's own registry cleaner, under "issues".
If you use any sort of reg. cleaner though, make a backup first. Never heard of problems arising from the use of the one in ccleaner, it's quite gentle. Some of them can do damage, though, used one once and couldn't even boot to restore the registry afterward. Had to re-install the OS. My ignorance.
If you use any sort of reg. cleaner though, make a backup first. Never heard of problems arising from the use of the one in ccleaner, it's quite gentle. Some of them can do damage, though, used one once and couldn't even boot to restore the registry afterward. Had to re-install the OS. My ignorance.
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Push Ctrl+Shift+Escape to bring up the process list.
I have 24 processes listed at the moment -- 10 which are hardware support or anti-virus, 13 windows internal processes and services, and my Web browser.
If there are more than 30 with no programs open, he's installed a lot of $hit -- if there's loads of stuff running in the bottom right-hand corner (system tray) then this is the likely culprit, CCleaner won't get rid of these as they aren't problems in themselves. If there are programs he doesn't use which always run (those listed in MSConfig) then uninstall them from Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs.
I have 24 processes listed at the moment -- 10 which are hardware support or anti-virus, 13 windows internal processes and services, and my Web browser.
If there are more than 30 with no programs open, he's installed a lot of $hit -- if there's loads of stuff running in the bottom right-hand corner (system tray) then this is the likely culprit, CCleaner won't get rid of these as they aren't problems in themselves. If there are programs he doesn't use which always run (those listed in MSConfig) then uninstall them from Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs.
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Thanks chaps Just recently installed XP on my machine and was supprised how many items were were running in the background from startup,used to have a utility called "End it all" for win 98 that used to shut down everything that was not necessary,improved the performanc of the likes of Duke Nukem no end did download summat similar for XP but its very complicated to use, it asks you to click on the items on start up you want to disable,but not being familiar with XP I havent a clue what is required and what isn't.
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Tony -- Windows XP uses NT-type services which are viewable under Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services, and can be started/stopped/disabled from there.
http://www.theeldergeek.com/services_guide.htm has a list of Windows XP services and details on what they do, and how important they are. It's a very good list I use whenever I have a new install of XP to 'slim down' process-wise. Unfortunately the site has exceeded its bandwidth usage limit so is unviewable atm!
http://www.theeldergeek.com/services_guide.htm has a list of Windows XP services and details on what they do, and how important they are. It's a very good list I use whenever I have a new install of XP to 'slim down' process-wise. Unfortunately the site has exceeded its bandwidth usage limit so is unviewable atm!
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Oh I know how to look at and disable stuff in startup using msconfig, it's just I do not know what is necessary and what is not,a lot of the stuff in start up just consists of annonymous numbers and letters,I mean what does RTHDCPL.EXE mean? what does it do?will the machine work without it?,thats just one example, there's is also a hell of a lot of stuff running in services but again I haven't a clue what half of them are,
ooops sorry Mr robdesbois posted this before I looked at yer link,again that's a bit complicated, with "End it All" one just clicked on a icon and it shut down everything without the complication of asking if you wanted it shut down,it knew what was safe to shut down and what was not.
ooops sorry Mr robdesbois posted this before I looked at yer link,again that's a bit complicated, with "End it All" one just clicked on a icon and it shut down everything without the complication of asking if you wanted it shut down,it knew what was safe to shut down and what was not.
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I know, it's a pain there's so much which is totally unobvious as to what it actually does! Google is always a good one - search for the name of the process. The one you mention is "a part of Realtek HD Audio Control Panel".
The advantage of using MSConfig or disabling services is that then they stay disabled every time you start up, instead of having to end them every time manually.
The advantage of using MSConfig or disabling services is that then they stay disabled every time you start up, instead of having to end them every time manually.
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As markjoy suggests, the most likely culprit is a teenage boy.
My 13 year old has trashed every computer he has near to, including two laptops which actually belonged to him. The last one was a £750 Sony Vaio which slowed down to the point of being unusable and eventually would not even boot up; this happened twice and it's going back to Sony "under warranty" (it should not stop booting, obviously).
I don't think there is any way to prevent this. Windoze is too complicated and there are too many trojans around. I put some AV software on the Vaio and it found 13 nasty trojans. Most teenagers instantly to go any website, any link whatosever, without the slightest thought of what it might do. The "smarter" ones even download "new and improved" drivers for various bits on the motherboard; that usually trashes the computer completely.
The only practical way out of this is a backup of essential data, then a reformat, preferably using the recovery partition.
If the problem continues after that, it most likely a hardware failure. It's possible, for example, for a duff USB controller to use up 99.9% of CPU time.
My 13 year old has trashed every computer he has near to, including two laptops which actually belonged to him. The last one was a £750 Sony Vaio which slowed down to the point of being unusable and eventually would not even boot up; this happened twice and it's going back to Sony "under warranty" (it should not stop booting, obviously).
I don't think there is any way to prevent this. Windoze is too complicated and there are too many trojans around. I put some AV software on the Vaio and it found 13 nasty trojans. Most teenagers instantly to go any website, any link whatosever, without the slightest thought of what it might do. The "smarter" ones even download "new and improved" drivers for various bits on the motherboard; that usually trashes the computer completely.
The only practical way out of this is a backup of essential data, then a reformat, preferably using the recovery partition.
If the problem continues after that, it most likely a hardware failure. It's possible, for example, for a duff USB controller to use up 99.9% of CPU time.
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The child has chosen to download and install and run various items of malware - viruses, adware, and so on.
When my children used to do this I pulled the network cable immediately (don't want my ISP account banned for sending spam now, do I).
Then, when I had time, I fixed their machines, and allowed them to reconnect.
"When I had time" doubled on every incident (three days the first time, a week the second, a fortnight the third). They know that next time they do it it'll be a month ... and we've had no problems on our home network for years now
(At least, not any I've heard about, if they've managed to infect themselves again they've cleaned it up themselves, which is just as good really.)
Just a bit of bog standard child training, not rocket science.
When my children used to do this I pulled the network cable immediately (don't want my ISP account banned for sending spam now, do I).
Then, when I had time, I fixed their machines, and allowed them to reconnect.
"When I had time" doubled on every incident (three days the first time, a week the second, a fortnight the third). They know that next time they do it it'll be a month ... and we've had no problems on our home network for years now
(At least, not any I've heard about, if they've managed to infect themselves again they've cleaned it up themselves, which is just as good really.)Just a bit of bog standard child training, not rocket science.
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I agree entirely about child training procedures, and if I was a parent with total control I would do exactly that, but in certain post-divorce situations, with a certain type of teenage child determined to play one off against the other, etc, etc, one sometimes has to put the fire out without being able to do much about the next one starting a few days later.
I don't know of a good solution. A desktop PC, used by others, can to a large degree be locked down, and how to do this is a whole big subject on which reams have been written.
But a laptop is going to get trashed eventually, because children are inquisitive and the internet is full of hazards, especially on the sorts of websites (game cracks/cheats) which they tend to go to.
One can do certain things on the home router, assuming the said laptop is accessing the internet via a wifi router. For example, I limit my 13 year old to internet access via a wifi connection which is set up purely for him, and that lets through only ports 80, 443 and I think 65 (DNS). Unfortunately, most malware is still downloaded via plain HTTP (port 80)... It does stop him running P2P software though. One can also implement timed access that way (e.g. shutting off 11pm).
I don't know of a good solution. A desktop PC, used by others, can to a large degree be locked down, and how to do this is a whole big subject on which reams have been written.
But a laptop is going to get trashed eventually, because children are inquisitive and the internet is full of hazards, especially on the sorts of websites (game cracks/cheats) which they tend to go to.
One can do certain things on the home router, assuming the said laptop is accessing the internet via a wifi router. For example, I limit my 13 year old to internet access via a wifi connection which is set up purely for him, and that lets through only ports 80, 443 and I think 65 (DNS). Unfortunately, most malware is still downloaded via plain HTTP (port 80)... It does stop him running P2P software though. One can also implement timed access that way (e.g. shutting off 11pm).
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I don't know whether this would help IO 540's problem, but a little while ago I found myself supply teaching at a school which had gone "computer crazy". They had installed a radio LAN to cover the whole building with appropriately protected internet access e.t.c, e.t.c. All pupils were issued with a laptop which they paid the school so much a month for and at the end of a period the laptop belonged to them. All these laptops had standard software installed and, naturally they picked up viruses and other nasties from time to time. When a kid had such a problem, they took their machine to the school's I.T. technician who merely re-formatted the hard drive and uploaded the school's standard hard drive files. This included XP - the lot and naturally the virus/adaware/popup/spyware problem was cured. It also meant that the kid concerned lost all their favourite software that they had uploaded including game saves and so on. Thus there was a real incentiive to be careful. It certainly worked for them!
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Yes, I agree that's a good solution. Also, a school can afford to have a proper corporate-grade firewall which blocks various kinds of traffic, not just crudely blocking port numbers and named URLs as the £100 home routers can do.
The difficulty is with a laptop "owned" by a teenager and used at home. He/she is likely to be using it for all kinds of "personal and private" stuff, which these days is typically MSN chat and email. Unless you have complete authority over the kid, he won't let you have the laptop so you can clean it up. It will just get slower and slower.
Then, if (as is usually the case) you also have a desktop PC at home which you use for your normal work stuff (like say pprune
) he will increasingly demand access to that PC - yet avoidance of fighting (often with their siblings) over a house PC is probably the most common reason why kids are given laptops in the first place. Today, a teenager without MSN chat is like a kid without a bike in our teenage days. Rather sad but short of living on a little island there isn't much that can be done. Having said that, my other one is more than happy drilling holes in bits of metal in the workshop...
There is no easy fix for this. You have to let them trash it, and when it gets completely useless you run the recovery option.
Yes, I agree that's a good solution. Also, a school can afford to have a proper corporate-grade firewall which blocks various kinds of traffic, not just crudely blocking port numbers and named URLs as the £100 home routers can do.
The difficulty is with a laptop "owned" by a teenager and used at home. He/she is likely to be using it for all kinds of "personal and private" stuff, which these days is typically MSN chat and email. Unless you have complete authority over the kid, he won't let you have the laptop so you can clean it up. It will just get slower and slower.
Then, if (as is usually the case) you also have a desktop PC at home which you use for your normal work stuff (like say pprune
) he will increasingly demand access to that PC - yet avoidance of fighting (often with their siblings) over a house PC is probably the most common reason why kids are given laptops in the first place. Today, a teenager without MSN chat is like a kid without a bike in our teenage days. Rather sad but short of living on a little island there isn't much that can be done. Having said that, my other one is more than happy drilling holes in bits of metal in the workshop...There is no easy fix for this. You have to let them trash it, and when it gets completely useless you run the recovery option.
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I use Malwhere from www.malwhere.com (it's a free one) which details out the running processes and start up items and also (usually) is able to tell you what the process does. This is really useful when something new turns up on your computer.
Highly recommended!
Highly recommended!
