Laptop very slow

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

Mr Mojo

Hey man,
1st of all check your startup folder/taskbar to see if there's loads of programs loading up at startup, if so, remove some that are not necessary. Then run a Defrag of your hard drive.

irlrobins

Check the Event Viewer to see if there are any errors on start up
(Start-> control panel->Administrative Tools->event viewer)

secret_squirrel

Try googling for microsoft bootvis and give it a run.

irlrobins

Some instructions for the above:

Bootvis is a Boot performance trace visualization tool for use with Windows XP systems. It gives a graphical view of what processes are doing what and when during boot and allow you to optimise your boot up. A very handy tool.

Download Bootvis: http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/platform/performance/fastboot/default.asp

This is a self extracting ZIP file. Double click the file you just downloaded and unzip it to the folder of your choice. Locate Bootvis.exe click on it. You will now see the GUI of bootvis.

Now go to File > New and choose "Next boot trace" or "Next boot and drivers chase". Leave everything else as is and get ready for a reboot in 15 seconds.
Ok we are back after a reboot. Click on the Bootvis.exe, it will now output the results, once it has finished generating the report, you will see graphs 5 or 6 graphs. They look a bit confusing at this stage.

Now this is where the fun begins ! From the main menu .. Click on Trace >> optimize system.
And yes you guessed it another reboot .... :-)

Once you have re-booted and are back at your desktop, dont touch anything, just wait.

You will see a message box "Please wait for bootvis to load" ... about 20 seconds later another meassge box will appear "Optimising system for boot performance" basicallay bootvis is happily rearranging the boot files for a faster startup

One final thing to do, is to see if this has made a difference, get the watch out again and reboot. Compare the original time to the new time and you will be pleasantly suprised, I managed to shave 35 seconds off mine. I have heard people reduce their boot time to 20 seconds.

zilog_jones

I'd also recommend defragmenting if you haven't done so - if you've installed a lot of programs since you got the laptop it'll definately need it. Also check the power management settings and make sure the laptop's overheating or anything - the CPU clock speed could be throttled down if it's getting too hot, same goes for if you're running off the battery and have power management on "maximum battery" or something similar.

zuma

Whatever the problem is I hope this taught you a lesson.......make a backup image of your HD OS and use it to "refresh" your computers OS whenever you get into problems like this.

Windows/Program Files/Documents And Settings...etc on my computer takes up 65GB of space which shrinks to a 45GB image using Acronis Trueimage.

Whenever the computer becomes too slow for my likeing I boot into the BootCD set the image to restore and in ~1Hour have a fully working PC.

When you save all your files onto another volume this really is the BEST option to overcome these problems.

While you sacrifice HDD space....you save LOADS of heartache and time.

Ruu_Old

How much ram have you got? You could try disabling the many unnecessary Windows services, but be careful which ones you do disable. Thats all I can think of right now.:)

Our man in Havana

irlrobins wrote:

Some instructions for the above:

Bootvis is a Boot performance trace visualization tool for use with Windows XP systems. It gives a graphical view of what processes are doing what and when during boot and allow you to optimise your boot up. A very handy tool.

Download Bootvis: http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/platform/performance/fastboot/default.asp

This is a self extracting ZIP file. Double click the file you just downloaded and unzip it to the folder of your choice. Locate Bootvis.exe click on it. You will now see the GUI of bootvis.

Now go to File > New and choose "Next boot trace" or "Next boot and drivers chase". Leave everything else as is and get ready for a reboot in 15 seconds.
Ok we are back after a reboot. Click on the Bootvis.exe, it will now output the results, once it has finished generating the report, you will see graphs 5 or 6 graphs. They look a bit confusing at this stage.

Now this is where the fun begins ! From the main menu .. Click on Trace >> optimize system.
And yes you guessed it another reboot .... :-)

Once you have re-booted and are back at your desktop, dont touch anything, just wait.

You will see a message box "Please wait for bootvis to load" ... about 20 seconds later another meassge box will appear "Optimising system for boot performance" basicallay bootvis is happily rearranging the boot files for a faster startup

One final thing to do, is to see if this has made a difference, get the watch out again and reboot. Compare the original time to the new time and you will be pleasantly suprised, I managed to shave 35 seconds off mine. I have heard people reduce their boot time to 20 seconds.

Bootvis is no longer available from the microsoft website.

You can download it here, http://www.soft32.com/Download/Free/BootVis/4-19687-1.html

Irish Wolf

Solitaryman666 wrote:

This post has been deleted.

Can you give your definition of "very slow" and "flew on" are? What kind of spec are you dealing with?

Tom Dunne

Don't forget MSCONFIG (start->run->msconfig [ENTER]).

This will show you what is loading at startup. Disable each program one by one to see what happens.