Laptop soooo slowwwwwwwww!
Thread Starter
Joined: Jul 2001
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From: Down South
Laptop soooo slowwwwwwwww!
Hello All
Lately my laptop has become so slow. Takes for ever to start up and also takes ages to open an IE page etc. Never used to be so bad.
I've done a disk clean up, defrag, scanned for virus/adware/spyware and everything comes back fine-but it's still painfully slow.
Any ideas?
Lately my laptop has become so slow. Takes for ever to start up and also takes ages to open an IE page etc. Never used to be so bad.
I've done a disk clean up, defrag, scanned for virus/adware/spyware and everything comes back fine-but it's still painfully slow.
Any ideas?
Hippopotomonstrosesquipidelian title
Joined: Oct 2006
Posts: 1,825
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From: is everything
Scan again using ad-aware and spybot to confirm that the machine is relatively clean. Then run CCleaner. After that, let Erunt and NTRegopt look at the registry. All these tools are safe and useful.
Also, let Trend Micro's Housecall scan your system, it's pretty good at picking up stuff. You can get a free scan at the website.
Incidentally, after booting and with the computer sitting idle, how much CPU is it using and what application is using it? Ideally, CPU should be around 10% on an idle computer and the main process should be System Idle Process at 90% or higher.
If you don't routinely use Start -> Search to look for stuff within files, turn of Microsoft's indexing service. That can bring some systems to their knees.
After that, if there's no improvement, then we need to dig deeper :-)
Also, let Trend Micro's Housecall scan your system, it's pretty good at picking up stuff. You can get a free scan at the website.
Incidentally, after booting and with the computer sitting idle, how much CPU is it using and what application is using it? Ideally, CPU should be around 10% on an idle computer and the main process should be System Idle Process at 90% or higher.
If you don't routinely use Start -> Search to look for stuff within files, turn of Microsoft's indexing service. That can bring some systems to their knees.
After that, if there's no improvement, then we need to dig deeper :-)
Joined: Apr 2005
Posts: 73
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From: Merry old England
I started exactly the same thread on here a few pages back, have a look.
I tried every solution offered by the kind people, but nothing helped. I even deleted my protection from my laptop and bought the best McAfee anti-everything I could find but it didnt help. I started to think it might be a hardware problem.
I then decided to pick up the phone book and find a local, back street pc repair shop (not pc world!!).
Told him my problem.....£35 for a complete clean up.
Machine is like new. Brilliant.
I tried every solution offered by the kind people, but nothing helped. I even deleted my protection from my laptop and bought the best McAfee anti-everything I could find but it didnt help. I started to think it might be a hardware problem.
I then decided to pick up the phone book and find a local, back street pc repair shop (not pc world!!).
Told him my problem.....£35 for a complete clean up.
Machine is like new. Brilliant.
Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 169
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From: Eastbourne
Probably just emptied Prefetch, Temp and Temporary internet files, cleared down the history file and unchecked all the crappie little utilities that have infested your start-up section, Wish I had the kneck to charge someone for doing that, would have made a mint over the years. 
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,443
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From: Cambridge, England, EU
Ideally, CPU should be around 10% on an idle computer
Everything is under control.
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 437
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From: Washington, D.C.
1. There are various startup managers that will let you see what utilities are booting and let you stop unneeded ones from booting. I use "Absolute Startup" but there are many other good ones.
2. I have not seen disk usage mentioned. Even after all the cleanup above, you should have at least 10 percent or so, or more, of your hard disk as free space. Otherwise, your disk spends too much time thrashing trying to allocate your data to sectors.
2. I have not seen disk usage mentioned. Even after all the cleanup above, you should have at least 10 percent or so, or more, of your hard disk as free space. Otherwise, your disk spends too much time thrashing trying to allocate your data to sectors.
Hippopotomonstrosesquipidelian title
Joined: Oct 2006
Posts: 1,825
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From: is everything
Gertrude, I'll call you on that. Open Task Manager, look at the CPU usage and tell me honestly that it's below 1% on your system. Hint: Task Manager itself takes about 2% on an average system. Right now, mine's around 6%, what with the random idiocies of Mr Norton doing stuff when no stuff needs to be done.
Joined: Feb 2000
Posts: 542
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From: asia
Task Manager?
Win2K, 2.4GHz Celeron, and I can't get task manager to go above 1%, even setting it to its fastest refresh/update speed
For the OP's problem, i agree that some measurement would be nice, but i would hazard a guess, assuming no virus, etc, that it is clogged up with lots of junk starting automatically, and also maybe windows update doing its thing periodically.
For the OP's problem, i agree that some measurement would be nice, but i would hazard a guess, assuming no virus, etc, that it is clogged up with lots of junk starting automatically, and also maybe windows update doing its thing periodically.
Hippopotomonstrosesquipidelian title
Joined: Oct 2006
Posts: 1,825
Likes: 1
From: is everything
I'll concede limited defeat on the 1%/6%/10% thing, because one person's idle is another person's quite busy what with Skype, VPN, encryption drivers and stuff doing their thing. 
And the machine's been defragged. And we can assume the swap area is fine, and there's enough RAM since the computer has slowed down, not always been slow. So I concur, it's a quest for the pile of stuff starting up at boot time.
I'd be tempted to try a safe boot (F8) and see if that feels a little faster, then that would point one in the right direction. I'd normally recommend running Hijack This, but the listing tells strangers an awful lot about what one does with one's computer and it does seem to concern people around here
. Would be nice to know if there's anything sat there thinking it's a server of some kind, though.
And the machine's been defragged. And we can assume the swap area is fine, and there's enough RAM since the computer has slowed down, not always been slow. So I concur, it's a quest for the pile of stuff starting up at boot time.
I'd be tempted to try a safe boot (F8) and see if that feels a little faster, then that would point one in the right direction. I'd normally recommend running Hijack This, but the listing tells strangers an awful lot about what one does with one's computer and it does seem to concern people around here
. Would be nice to know if there's anything sat there thinking it's a server of some kind, though.
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 906
Likes: 102
From: Southampton
We had the same problem which was caused by McAffe anti spam. We thought that the spam was being deleted but it wasn't. We had to manually delete the 'deleted' spam. Then it worked fine.
The problem soon came back though and now we run it without the anti spam software and without problems.
The problem soon came back though and now we run it without the anti spam software and without problems.
Joined: Feb 2006
Aviation Qualifications: LAME
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From: Falling off the end of the thread
I run a programme called windows washer, it cleans off all the junk off your hard drive, deletes all the records of your browsing and clears all the caches out.......... Have ran it since had PC and 4 years later is still running fine Originally bought it because I do a lot of gaming so it make it runs faster..
http://www.webroot.com/consumer/products/windowwasher/
Originally bought it because I do a lot of gaming so it make it runs faster..http://www.webroot.com/consumer/products/windowwasher/
Joined: Feb 2000
Posts: 542
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From: asia
And we can assume the swap area is fine, and there's enough RAM since the computer has slowed down, not always been slow.
Best not to assume anything, is easy enough to check.
Official PPRuNe Chaplain
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 3,498
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From: Witnesham, Suffolk
Thanks - you reminded me! My laptop has been taking ever longer to boot and to shut down. Once it's up and running, it seems OK. It's just the 5 minutes to start and close...
So I ran CCleaner, and NTRegOpt. No noticeable improvement.
I noticed that my Registry is (it tells me) 37MB. That seems a tad large - especially for a laptop. What do folks think?
So I ran CCleaner, and NTRegOpt. No noticeable improvement.
I noticed that my Registry is (it tells me) 37MB. That seems a tad large - especially for a laptop. What do folks think?
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,443
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From: Cambridge, England, EU
Gertrude, I'll call you on that. Open Task Manager, look at the CPU usage and tell me honestly that it's below 1% on your system.
Open windows: task manager; Windows explorer; this browser window; Visual Studio 2005 and its help system; control panel Services applet; a custom and rather nasty piece of Java. Machine: not too ancient desktop, designed for building software not playing games, 3.4GHz, 2G RAM. But I get the same sub-1% behaviour on all my other machines, including vastly slower ones than this.
Look, I got paid lots of money to spend most of last week finding out why one particular application, which was doing a lot of polling, was eating 10% CPU whilst idle, as that was clearly completely unacceptable. I got it down to below 1%, even up after making it run six times faster, ie I improved its performance by a factor of 60.
Maybe you've got some simlarly badly engineered applications running?
Whatever, if you think 10% idle CPU is normal you're used to some very odd behaviour.
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 98
Likes: 11
From: UK
Well, I seem to have the same problems. My CPU is ticking over in the high 30% range. It sometimes goes up to 100% with nothing obvious happening.
I ran most of the cleaning programs, Norton Webclean, AdAware etc. Defragged the disk, done a full anitvirus scan and installed Absolute Startup, which allowed me to identify and shut down a few more.
But what with the full set of Norton Security installed and a load of app's I can't identify, I have around 35 applications running in the task manager window.
Does anyone know the best way to identify what these are, to see if I need them, or to stop them from running?
I'm not an expert at this so it needs to be kept relatively straightforward folks!!
I ran most of the cleaning programs, Norton Webclean, AdAware etc. Defragged the disk, done a full anitvirus scan and installed Absolute Startup, which allowed me to identify and shut down a few more.
But what with the full set of Norton Security installed and a load of app's I can't identify, I have around 35 applications running in the task manager window.
Does anyone know the best way to identify what these are, to see if I need them, or to stop them from running?
I'm not an expert at this so it needs to be kept relatively straightforward folks!!
Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 169
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From: Eastbourne
Applications or Processes, if it,s under the Processes Tab, simlpy click the USER NAME header once to sort the items into catagory, your shold now be all at the top of the listing, i.e. items tha you are running, firewall and antivirus/spyware ect, browser, explorer and of course Task manager.
This shold be followed by:
LOCAL SERVICES
NETWORK SERVICES
SYSTEM.
To ID any process currently running in your task manager listings goto this site: http://www.processlibrary.com/
Enter the name of the .exe as listed into the search box and you will get back a detailed page of information on the item, if you can or should remove it, how to fix it it's broken and a host of other tools on the top half of the page alone, below that a full library of all current .exe that can be found in the process listing.
This shold be followed by:
LOCAL SERVICES
NETWORK SERVICES
SYSTEM.
To ID any process currently running in your task manager listings goto this site: http://www.processlibrary.com/
Enter the name of the .exe as listed into the search box and you will get back a detailed page of information on the item, if you can or should remove it, how to fix it it's broken and a host of other tools on the top half of the page alone, below that a full library of all current .exe that can be found in the process listing.