Fix Slow PC Help

barneysplash

Hi everyone,
Please excuse my ignorance, but I've searched this forum
and not found what I need so I'm going to ask for help now

What is the best steps to take to keep your PC running fast?

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 6400
with 2GB of RAM
a Toshiba MK 1237 GSX 120GB SATA Hard Disk (30.6 GB Used)
Windows XP Service Pack 3

I use Piriform Defraggler http://www.defraggler.com/


And another question is, how can I see what is using up all
the space on my Hard Disk, in a chart or a graph? That would
be really useful.

THis is a fairly common problem that frequently needs fixing by people
like me who come to this forum. Maybe this could be added to the FAQ???

Thanks

Barney

marco_polo

Since you have 90GB free it is unlikely to be disk space that is causing any problems.

Download something like CCCleaner, this can give you a list of all programs that startup automatically on boot. You can then look at disabling/ uninstalling any programs that that you do not need.

Also what anti virus are you using?, some of them can be a real killer on performance.

Slow performance could also be virus related so it may be worth doing a scan to check this out.

h8red

Download TreeSize Free from here...

This will scan your drive and give a nice drillable (real word?) graph showing where all your space is gone.

barneysplash

Hi

I do use C Cleaner, it's very good. http://www.ccleaner.com/

I use AVG 8.5, it is also very good. http://free.avg.com/download-avg-anti-virus-free-edition

I do a full virus scan every week or so, and am very careful about
what websites are visited.

For installing new programs or utilities, I'll always go online and get a
few reviews from different sites, especially the user comments.

C-net is good for this, http://download.cnet.com/windows/,
but it can be a bit overwhelming and difficult to see exactly
what you want sometimes.
But if you google the program name and "review"
you will get some good info off forums similar to boards.

The slowness is very noticeable at startup, when the Windows Desktop first appears.
The Hard Disk activity light is flashing away like mad and you can hear
the disk working very hard.

Anyone out there know what I mean?

h8red

Sounds like there may be a lot of processes loading at startup. The majority of these will persist throughout your windows session and could be using up a lot of resources in the background. Right click on your taskbar across the bottom of the screen and click task manager. Tell us how many processes are running (very bottom left of task manager).

Edit: Try giving this a run too: Page defrag. If your page file is fragmented it can be a killer on your performance. No matter what defrag program you use it won't defrag the page file. This program defrags the page file just before windows starts up. When you run this if the number of fragments on your pagefile is more than one you need to set it to run at next boot. Could take ages. Make sure you plug the laptop in and don't touch it even if it looks like it's not doing anything.

barneysplash

h8red wrote: »

Tell us how many processes are running (very bottom left of task manager).

There are 46 process running at my startup.

I'll give those programs a go and see what happens.

Will post the results