V e r y s l o w l a p t o p... hayulp!

My mum has been complaining her laptop is running really slowly and
taking it's time connecting on wifi. I've defragged it, cleaned the
crap out, scanned for spyware, rootkits and viruses. I've been into
device manager and all devices appear to be working normally. There's
no unexpected disk activity, etc.

She's had it 2.5 years and it's been fine, until about 2 months ago.

It has 2GB ram 1.86 gHz celery processor 120GB drive, with about 40 GB
used. Of course... it's running Vista.

Anyone give me any clues WTF is going on? My laptop, which needs a lot
of crap shifting and a good defrag, is running like lightning
compared.

 

What does the Vista Sidebar indicate as to CPU/RAM usage?

Come to that, stick something like Speedfan on it and check the
temperatures.

Brownz will be along in a minute to suggest something actually useful,
no doubt.

 

type msconfig in the RUN box - look at the programmes being loaded on
startup. Disable any that aren't essential - things like Adobe Update if
allowed to run at start-up will increase the time before IE or Firefox will
load.

Look at the web browser(s) she uses. Uninstall any addons that aren't
needed e.g. toolbars

Clean the registry - see tucows for free tools
http://www.tucows.com/software.html?t2=1887#softwarebrowser

 

"Vass" <> banged this out on the
bongos:

Process explorer yields this little lot.

https://docs.google.com/document/ed...PDu3KWplb-QcK4ER8KLn3c&hl=en&authkey=CPyo3OUM

In startup, I've disabled everything that I can identify as not being
needed (office, mobile phone software, video capture utility, adobe
updater, java updater, etc.)

 

Already done

Also already done

Kinda done via crapcleaner. I'll have a look @ tucows.

See my reply to vass, for a process explorer dump.

 

do you need the superantispyware? Doesn't AVG do that now?

My desktop is 6 years old, so getting a bit slow now. I had Avast & Spybot
running. Binned those in favour of Microsoft's all in one Security
Essential. Does AV & Spyware, seems okay & certainly loads quicker than the
other 2. Cured my IE[1] hanging problem, too.

[1] forced to use it by Egg as their banking portal won't load other
banks' stuff in Firefox.

 

Reinstall from the original disk image does it for me.

 

Yeah... dump vista !

;-)

 

Drop superantispyware and the SearchIndexer for starters.

 

Sound. Now we've found a way to get W7 at sensible money, we'll be
moving on from out current hodgepodge of XP and Vista toot sweet, as
they say shure Le Continong.

While you're there ... I don't suppose you've got any spare monitors
lying around under your desk that might be available for sensible
money, like? The Boy, (who is still bashing your ex-X-box, BTW)
managed to kill my old 19" LCD and is currently peering at the spare
17" and has a right miff on, 'cos he can't afford a new one and I can't
persuade Elly to get herself a nice sparkly 23" widescreen and cascade
her old one down to him. Any chance?

 

I'd hurl AVG as well - we all used to run it, but it started hogging
resources as well as slowing startup. So we scat the thing and went to
Avast Free, which seems to work very nicely TYVM, without sludging
stuff up like AVG was.

 

Avast doesn't do the spyware thing. See above, I was running Spybot with it
but found an alternative. Are you running a spyware thingy?

 

Yep, Spybot. It hasn't found anything of note for many months, mind,
but OTOH neither has anything else.

 

it got very slow to boot up after the last update so I binned it

 

That's the way to treat 'em!

 

I've just this minute got rid of AVG. I did a bit of googling and it would
appear that Avira is a tad better than Avast so I've installed that.
Certainly seems a lot quicker than AVG.

--
Malc

Rusted and ropy.
Dog-eared old copy.
Vintage and classic,
or just plain Jurassic:
all words to describe me.

 

Swot I told her...

 

Just had a cull in the samples cupboard and distributed a load out to
the rest of the team.

We have some good deals in the clearance store at the moment
though....

http://www.rm.com/shops/clearance/Range.aspx?nguid=a70acb55-9189-4293-a755-c754b7f9632c

Drop me a mail if anything takes your fancy.

 

I tend to recommend MSE to people now. AVG went silly, and Avast clogged
up my old man's computer.

 

Thanks, man. Working on it.