So your laptop has slowed to **** - what now?

Zascar

What is the first steps you should take to try to get it back to normal, without having to reinstall windows?

Scandisk, CCleaner, virus etc etc - what else?

My flatmates laptop is unbelievably slow, takes 10 mins to start up - must be riddled with crap cause its only a year old... It shuts down after being on for an hour etc. He's got a lot of data on it so backing up is very hard cause it crashes etc.

What are the best things to do to try to get it some way more normal without reinstalling?

It's a Dell Inspiron 1520 with Vista. I'm used to XP so does vista have any tricks to repair itself?

Thanks

Voodu Child

If the current OS isn't stable enough to backup his files, use a linux liveCD or liveUSB to do it. Backing up the data has got to be the first priority.

Overheal

+1. Back Up all important data. fetch license keys for all of your software, especially the OS.

Im sorry but laptops and their Recovery Drives make it stupidly easy to reformat, and thats why I do it so damn much. Every 6 months at least, just to keep her purring and devoid of bloat.

Zascar

Voodu Child wrote: »

If the current OS isn't stable enough to backup his files, use a linux liveCD or liveUSB to do it. Backing up the data has got to be the first priority.

OK thanks. I'm not familar with either so can you please explain how I do this?
Cheers

Voodu Child

Zascar wrote: »

OK thanks. I'm not familar with either so can you please explain how I do this?
Cheers

Well, you download your choice of LiveCD*. Then, you burn it to a blank CD/DVD, making sure to burn as an .iso - (most burning software will help you with this eg CDBurnXP).

Then, you just pop the CD in the drive and turn the computer on. (You might need to press one of the F keys to tell it to boot from the CD drive, depending on what the boot order is set as). And that's it, away you go, you've got a fully working OS that is running from the CD drive rather than the HDD, so you don't have to contend with whatever virus's or installation problems you have on the Windows installation, and it shouldn't crash or shut-down the way it currently is. And you can browse your hard-drive, and copy off important files to an external backup.

Its not an ideal solution (will be quite slow to boot-up), its just an alternative if the current OS isn't stable and you want to get data off the drive before you do a reinstall. A LiveUSB is similar, but runs off a thumb-drive or external USB hard-drive (should be a lot quicker than a LiveCD, although your system may not support booting from a USB drive)

*The unix forum would be the best place to get recommendations, theres plenty available in various sizes and functionalities.

Zascar

Cool, sound perfect.

Before I go to the linux forum does anyone have any LiveUSB recommendations?

ronkmonster

Anti-Vir have a boot cd to scan for virus'. Might be worth downloading and scanning with it.

Also Avast has a boot time scan so it'll scan for virus' before windows fully starts. Its free too.

After those two programs, try malware bytes to remove any spyware.

First two thing i suggest, you can just leave them work away. Avast will ask what to do first time it finds something.

Alanstrainor

ubuntu 9 is what i use, really easy to create a usb bootable drive. And even easier to create a live cd. Just download ubuntu, burn it to a cd, quick it in the laptop, power it on, enter the boot menu and select cd drive. I think it's f12 you hit to get to the boot options.

majiktripp

I'd boot in to the Dell Utility Partition (Press F12 on boot) and run a check on the hard drive, (the Dell software for this is decent, or try DriveFitnessTest) just to make sure that what your experiencing isn't a slowly failing hard drive, and not the OS becomming corrupted where a reinstall may not work.

Zascar

Hey guys,

I'm giving this a go now. I downloaded a Windows XP Live CD and booted it up fine. Thing is I cannot see the laptops hard drive! All I can see if the Live CD drive and the "B" Drive.

Any ideas? What should i do?

I just want to be able to back up the data then I will reinstall
Thanks for your help!

Overheal

you have the Hard Disk's drivers? You may need to fetch and install those first. And your bios, etc.

Zascar

Huh? I thought they would just be there already!

I tried the live cd on my desktop pc and it sees my drives fine, and I can swap files around easily. How do I find my hard disk etc drivers?

Would a differnt live cd work?

Can anyone recommend a good live cd that will just work? All I need to do is plug in an external hard drive and transfer files across.

Cheers