Speed up my laptop please!

blondeonblonde

Hey All,

Hoping someone might be able to help me out there.. Lately my laptop has been getting really slow, I have anti spyware installed - spyware terminator and AVG antivirus - neither of these ever show up any viruses so don't think thats a problem... Have disabled the aero Vista graphics which helps a bit but i'm guessing there must be some programs running in the background that are slowing everything down - is there any way to check what these may be and whether I can disable them if not needed?!?

Laptop is about 2 years old... runs Vista Business SP1, Intel Core 2 Duo processor T8300 2.4Ghz with 3gb of RAM.

Any tips, ideas would be appreciated.

WIZE

Have you run a disk defrag on your Laptop

blondeonblonde

No, I had looked at some of the other posts on this forum which recommended defrags and reformatting the hard disk but to be honest its all dutch to me... I'm probably just paranoid about losing the stuff on my laptop -- have loads of college notes etc that I need.

Would a defrag be the first place to start in speeding it up? Apologies for the noob question but how does it work?

blondeonblonde

Sorry, scratch that question ... googled it. I suppose I'll give that a try then.. Hopefully it will speed it up a bit... Cheers

techie

Look for a program on Google called combofix and run it, it will give out about AVG running but ignore that.

It will find stuff running that shouldn't and delete it.

CodeMonkey

Sometimes the best option is just nuke everything and restore back to factory default.

Voodu Child

blondeonblonde wrote: »

Hey All,

Hoping someone might be able to help me out there.. Lately my laptop has been getting really slow, I have anti spyware installed - spyware terminator and AVG antivirus - neither of these ever show up any viruses so don't think thats a problem... Have disabled the aero Vista graphics which helps a bit but i'm guessing there must be some programs running in the background that are slowing everything down - is there any way to check what these may be and whether I can disable them if not needed?!?

Laptop is about 2 years old... runs Vista Business SP1, Intel Core 2 Duo processor T8300 2.4Ghz with 3gb of RAM.

Any tips, ideas would be appreciated.

CCleaner. Install this and get accustomed to its features. Uninstall programs you don't need any more, and clean the startup list so that you don't have a tonne of google/adobe/etc crap starting every time you turn on your computer.

AVG has a spyware component, so you can get rid of spyware terminator (or at least turn it off so it's not constantly running in the background). You can also turn off the resident shield component of Windows Defender (vistas built in anti-spyware), it's just not necessary, AVG does a grand job.

blondeonblonde

Cheers for the advice, I'll probably start with a defrag to see how that goes... Like I said, don't really want to reformat the whole lot and restore defaults cos it sounds firstly like alot of work! and also am paranoid about losing stuff whether its backed up or not...

Just had a look on windows defender to see what programs are in start up and looks like a long list so i'm sure that has a lot to do with it. If defrag doesn't work then will try the CCleaner program..

Thanks again... :pac:

docmol

"I'm probably just paranoid about losing the stuff on my laptop -- have loads of college notes etc that I need."
And you haven't backed them up? Crazy!!!! Backup your data! Do it now!
After backing up you can run msconfig to find/disable unwanted startup programs, which might help.(just type "msconfig" into search)

WIZE

CodeMonkey wrote: »

Sometimes the best option is just nuke everything and restore back to factory default.

Thats bad adivce . you can do that if nothing else works.

You need to find out what is causing the laptop to be slow.
thing like :

How big is you hard drive?
How full is your Hard drive?
Do you have Applications on your laptop that you dont use anymore?
Do you save folders on your desktop of your C drive?
Have you got alot of music, Photos, Videos saved on the Laptop?
Would you be able to use an external harddrive to save data?
Might you have 2 anti virus programs on your laptop that could be conflict with each other?
If you need help with any of this you can PM me and I will guide you through it

blondeonblonde

Just another quick question, if I disable a program in windows defender from running at start up - does that mean that i am totally disabling the program from working or does it just stop it from starting automatically when I'm not necessarily using it?

blondeonblonde

docmol wrote: »

"I'm probably just paranoid about losing the stuff on my laptop -- have loads of college notes etc that I need."
And you haven't backed them up? Crazy!!!! Backup your data! Do it now!
After backing up you can run msconfig to find/disable unwanted startup programs, which might help.(just type "msconfig" into search)

No I have backed up my laptop to an external HD but just don't want to go to the hassle of wiping my laptop only to risk losing info when transferring back from External drive... probably isn't much of a risk of losing anything but what can i say, paranoia's a bitch!

WIZE

blondeonblonde wrote: »

Just another quick question, if I disable a program in windows defender from running at start up - does that mean that i am totally disabling the program from working or does it just stop it from starting automatically when I'm not necessarily using it?

Blondeonblonde. that software is protecting you Laptop.I recommend you leave it alone

Can you tell me that space left on your laptop.

Start - Computer - (right click on ) local disk C - Properties and tell me how much free space there is

ITDept

blondeonblonde wrote: »

Laptop is about 2 years old... runs Vista Business SP1, Intel Core 2 Duo processor T8300 2.4Ghz with 3gb of RAM.

BVB wrote: »

Have you run a disk defrag on your Laptop

If you haven't changed any settings, defrag will run automatically on Vista to a monthly schedule.

Check for any updates - start - windows update (although again the important ones are probably automatic if you haven't changed settings).

Most likely to be a lack of disk space (backup and delete files), or possibly something daft like the image used as your wallpaper / background is massive (choose one of the ones that comes as standard).

blondeonblonde

Have about 54gb of 220 free so laptop is pretty full, have loads of photos and music so I guess that accounts for a fair bit. Have only one anti virus installed - AVG.
Didn't realise having stuff saved on desktop would slow it down...

ITDept

Actually you have plenty of spare space there, so try updates and hopefully that'll help.

WIZE

Set up folders on you C drive. And move any documents to your folders . Keep the desktop for shortcuts.

54Gb is enough space but I recommend the stuff that you dont use everyday is put on an external hard drive .The main thing I can say is clean up you laptop. It has 3gb which is hugh your laptop should run proper.