Laptop running very slow

peustace

Hi all,
Got a laptop off my cousin to have a look at it. Its running very slow once Windows loads up. Even simple things like opening the Recycle Bin or My Computer can take up to a minute. Tried a couple of things already with no luck... Defragment, System restore no joy. Tried running AVG and it very slow and didnt finish, AVG wouldnt even run in safe mode.

In the Task Manager everything seems in order, decent CPU and memory usage.
And theres 20 GB free of a 60 GB hard drive. At a dead end here, anyone have any suggestions as to what to try next?

If needed its an E System laptop running Vista.

thanks all!

Dulchie

This sounds that it may be spyware.
It might be worth looking at http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
If you can try starting in safe mode see: http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-us/help/f9c50a72-04ec-4088-9fd4-a4f979eef5a71033.mspx
You could also try msconfig and choose disable on the start up tab.
This will have to be reversed to return the laptop to normal operation but is useful for trouble shooting

Adder1

peustace wrote: »

Hi all,
Got a laptop off my cousin to have a look at it. Its running very slow once Windows loads up. Even simple things like opening the Recycle Bin or My Computer can take up to a minute. Tried a couple of things already with no luck... Defragment, System restore no joy. Tried running AVG and it very slow and didnt finish, AVG wouldnt even run in safe mode.

In the Task Manager everything seems in order, decent CPU and memory usage.
And theres 20 GB free of a 60 GB hard drive. At a dead end here, anyone have any suggestions as to what to try next?

If needed its an E System laptop running Vista.

thanks all!

you could try running avg in safe mode or you could download clamwin portable (on different computer) extract to a usb key update it. Then plug it into laptop and run it perhaps also in safe mode

humaxf1

Adder1 wrote: »

you could try running avg in safe mode or you could download clamwin portable (on different computer) extract to a usb key update it. Then plug it into laptop and run it perhaps also in safe mode

OP has already tried running AVG in safe mode with no luck :rolleyes:

Options I can think of would be to either:

pop the laptop hard drive into a clean PC and run an AV scan on it (provided the OP is familiar with doing this)

Create an UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD) and run the builtin AV scanner

A 60GB HDD sounds pretty small for a Vista machine, unless it has being partitioned into 3 (system, data, restore). The other posters suggestions are all valid =provided= that Windows is running ok'ish. If it's slow to start with, it's gonna be torture trying to do anything intensive like an AV scan.

Adder1

OP has already tried running AVG in safe mode with no luck

oops sorry about that. I must be going blind!

could also create spybot boot cd and scan with that see link below

http://www.updatestar.com/en/publisher/Safer+Networking+Limited+Limited

humaxf1

hi adder,

apologies for the sarcastic smiley. it really annoys me when people don't read threads carefully...lol.

I've never heard of a spybot boot cd...will check it out tomorrow

o0o

Alanstrainor

Moved from laptops. If you are stuck, a reinstall of windows could be the answer, however you would need to makesure you backed up all your data.

peustace

Hi all,
Thanks for the help todate! Just to let ye know how I'm getting on.

I eventually got an Avg scan done and it came up blank. I tried the UBCD but I dont think I followed the steps correctly because it only scanned approx 10 files. I'l re-run it tonight and see how that goes.

I also ran Msconfig but there are very few programs running in the background (about 8) and none appear suspicious.

Beginning to tear my hair out. I am looking at the possibility of just reinstalling Windows but I would like to try and figure it out first though just for my own self satisfaction.

Thanks for any help

humaxf1

windows can get so much up it's own ar*e, sometimes that it's just not worth the time and effort to get to the bottom of the problem...if it is diagnosable that is.

just bite the bullet and do a docs backup & format the mutha. I'd have no regrets!