Laptop is really slow

[Ross1988]

I need some help, my laptop has all but stopped doing anything, taking up to 10 minutes to open a programme! Opening chrome is okay, but pretty much everything else is ridiculously slow.

My restore points only go back to this morning for whatever reason, and I have done a AV update and scan and not a sausage.

So am I missing something? It can still be used, but I have about 275gb worth of stuff on here, and don't have the medium to back it up, especially since I have been waiting 30 mins to open Nero, I dread to think what the DVD copying process will be like.

Any suggestions, it's driving me mad!

ETA: The laptop is about a year old, and entirely capable, 4gb of ram, 2.1ghz.

Edited by Ross1988 on Monday 5th April 21:18

[bigdods]

what OS ?

try running msconfig (START>RUN>MSCONFIG) and remove anything that isnt needed from the startup (it will list the things that start, you can google for the names to see if they are useful)

also, temporarily disable automatic updates (START>CONTROL PANEL>SECURITY CENTER)

install malwarebytes and do a full scan.



ETA: Which AV ? I had avast , last week an update came through that crucified my PC performance. Uninstalled it and replace with Microsoft Security Essentials, back to normal speed now.

Edited by bigdods on Monday 5th April 21:23

[Ross1988]

bigdods said:

what OS ?

try running msconfig (START>RUN>MSCONFIG) and remove anything that isnt needed from the startup (it will list the things that start, you can google for the names to see if they are useful)

also, temporarily disable automatic updates (START>CONTROL PANEL>SECURITY CENTER)

install malwarebytes and do a full scan.



ETA: Which AV ? I had avast , last week an update came through that crucified my PC performance. Uninstalled it and replace with Microsoft Security Essentials, back to normal speed now.

Edited by bigdods on Monday 5th April 21:23

OS is Vista and the AV was ESET NOD32, i say was, it was removed in the system restore, going to try your other recommendations now.

Thanks

[Skier]

How full (in percentage terms) is your hard drive? If it's anything over 90% this could explain the performance hit.

Skier

[Ross1988]

its a 300gb hard drive so I only have 28gb left, but it has been a fuller than this and worked fine.

Not sure what the little flashing blue light is on the HP's laptops means, but its now permanent where as before it was not.

[Funk]

Ross, if you'd like me to have a look for you I'd be happy to remote in and do a clean-up.

[Skier]

Ross1988 said:

its a 300gb hard drive so I only have 28gb left, but it has been a fuller than this and worked fine.

Not sure what the little flashing blue light is on the HP's laptops means, but its now permanent where as before it was not.

I think this is highly likely to be your issue. A 300Gb hard drive will only have around 280GB of space and you've used almost all of it. Open 'Computer' and right-click on your 'C' drive and then click on properties; this will show you the used and free space on your drive. You need to delete files or move them off the hard drive. Get it down to around 250Gb and see how it is. Once you've done this download CCleaner and run it, or get an IT literate friend to have a look at it and clean it up.

I'd guess that the blue light is an indiaction of hard drive activity and your hard drive is working overtime as a result of having virtually no free space.

Skier

Edited by Skier on Monday 5th April 23:08

[amir_j]

Ross1988 said:

its a 300gb hard drive so I only have 28gb left, but it has been a fuller than this and worked fine.

Do you schedule defragmentation regularly? if not so that as well

[Funk]

amir_j said:

Ross1988 said:

its a 300gb hard drive so I only have 28gb left, but it has been a fuller than this and worked fine.

Do you schedule defragmentation regularly? if not so that as well

It won't defrag with so little space left on the drive. Well it might, but it'll take years.

[Ross1988]

Overnight years? or Litteral years? I'm trying to clear some space, just got Windirstat to see where it all is.

[Funk]

Ross1988 said:

Overnight years? or Litteral years? I'm trying to clear some space, just got Windirstat to see where it all is.

Machines typically need 15% free space for a defrag. It will take a long time, possibly days to defrag as it is now. That said, I think a defrag is the least of the concerns for the moment.

The advice in this thread has been good. Go buy an external hard drive and dump as much of your data onto it as you can (docs, pics, music etc). Clear some space. There are programmes which quickly show you which whopping files are where - I use Sequoiaview - so you can see whether something odd's going on. CCleaner will let you clear out the masses of crap in your temp files and such, as well as doing a registry cleanup. WinPatrol will allow you to sort out what runs at startup (including hidden or delayed items) but HijackThis is a quick way of assessing things if you know what you're looking at.

I'd run a couple of malware sweeps (Malwarebytes and Microsoft's Security Essentials are very good) as well as an off-board AV scan (Trend do a good one). Once that's done (and with minimal files on the machine) do a defrag to finish, along with a disk check as standard maintenance. Transfer back essential files, but use the external drive for bigger files and keep it with the laptop for when you need them.

Or reformat, which will speed it up to being as quick as it was when you bought it. Your call! Back everything up before you cock about with anything though.

Edited by Funk on Monday 5th April 23:26

[Ross1988]

I've done/did everything recommended, gonna leave it on defrag tonight and hope for the best, but looks like it need a complete reset.

I think I will invest in 1tb hard drive if I get a chance tomorrow.

Thanks for the input everyone.

[Skier]

When you say that you're going to invest in a 1TB drive do you mean an external drive to store things on or a replacement drive for your laptop? Whatever you do and where ever you store your data please ensure that you BACK IT UP! Preferably through an automated process. I cannot tell you the number of times friends/colleagues have told me that they back things up (manually) but haven't done so for a couple of months and have now lost all recent data.

If you truly need to reformat your drive then given the quantity of data you have I would invest in a larger capacity internal drive. Given that your laptop is only a year old you will have a SATA drive:

1TB - http://www.dabs.com/products/western-digital-scorp...

750GB - http://www.dabs.com/products/western-digital-scorp...

If you do this then you still need a robust back-up method.

Regards

Skier

[Ross1988]

Yes, sorry, i meant an external hard drive, I will look at expanding internally aswell.

Thankyou for the links.