Is my laptop dying?

xzanti

I have a 5-6 year old Dell Studio laptop and it's acting up lately.. I ran a Microsoft Security anti-virus on it the other day and it's giving me a 'green flag' logo but the laptop is still very slow.

Internet pages keep crashing and the laptop itself crashes if I try to watch anything on youtube for more than a minute

Also my applications have slowed down.. I have a relatively large Excel sheet that I've been working on and it's taking me 20 seconds to jump from cell to cell as it keeps freezing.. very annoying

I'm not a techie person at all unfortunately.. so haven't a clue what's wrong with it..

Any ideas? also could anyone point me in direction of a good repair person in the Dublin/Meath/Kildare area.

Many thanks

Private Joker

Very difficult to diagnose from your description, it could be malware, bad ram, hard drive failing etc etc... check to see if there is any processes hogging your resources, run a disk defrag and run a program called hitman pro http://www.surfright.nl/en. see if that throws up anything.

adocholiday

A 5-6 year old machine, could just be old hardware. What are the specs of the computer? If you go to the start button and right-click on 'My Computer' or 'Computer' (depends on the operating system) and go to Properties. Let us know what the processor is and the RAM. That can give us a start.

mcw92

More than likely the specs, you r laptop is just getting too old.
If the slow down happened over night as such, then it may be something hogging your ram/processor.
If you backup everything, a clean restore might be the best option, this will remove any unneeded programs/bloatware. It will also remove any virus if that is the case.

xzanti

adocholiday wrote: »

A 5-6 year old machine, could just be old hardware. What are the specs of the computer? If you go to the start button and right-click on 'My Computer' or 'Computer' (depends on the operating system) and go to Properties. Let us know what the processor is and the RAM. That can give us a start.

Thanks

Intel (R) Pentium (R) Dual CPU T3200 @ 2.00 GHz 2.00 GHz
RAM 2.00 GB
System Type 32-bit Operating System

adocholiday

I'm assuming that you are running Windows XP? Shouldn't be performing that badly with the specs of that laptop. I could advise upgrading the RAM if possible but I don't think that its the issue here.

Has it been getting progressively worse or did it just happen suddenly?

The problem is that it could be a multitude of things. As others have said it could be the RAM/CPU on the way out, malware, etc.

The best thing to do is backup everything and do a clean install of Windows, if its still slow after that then it is most likely a hardware issue. You could spend hours running different diagnostics etc and still be none the wiser. I recommend doing a clean install of an OS maybe once per year/18 months to prevent issues like you're having.

I believe that the age of the laptop is the culprit here though. 5-6 years is a decent amount of time to get from a laptop and you should consider an upgrade

biko

It could be crap accumulating over time.
Use CCleaner and Defraggler, both free from Piriform.

xzanti

adocholiday wrote: »

The best thing to do is backup everything and do a clean install of Windows, if its still slow after that then it is most likely a hardware issue. You could spend hours running different diagnostics etc and still be none the wiser. I recommend doing a clean install of an OS maybe once per year/18 months to prevent issues like you're having.

Sorry, how do I do that?

Cheers

biko

A clean install means wiping everything off of the computer and starting from brand new.
It's like a factory reset of your phone, all apps and contacts etc will be erased.
You will need to backup all your personal documents.

xzanti

I'll try that so.. Much appreciated

adocholiday

There are lots of guides online on how to re-install your operating system. It can seem a little daunting to someone who isn't very familiar with that end of computers but it really is a fairly straight-forward process. You will need a Windows XP disk, sometimes one comes with the computer, if not you will have to get a Windows XP disk and ensure that it matches the version that you have (e.g. Windows XP Home edition).

You will need your windows license key (normally on a sticker on your laptop but after so many years it could be worn away - if so, there are some free programs available that can get it from the computer's registry).

Here is a good guide for installing XP, once you have wiped the old install:

http://www.wikihow.com/Install-Windows-XP

If you have any computer savvy friends they could probably help you with the process. Just ensure that you back up everything first because once you start fresh you will lose everything!

dilallio

xzanti wrote: »

Sorry, how do I do that?

Cheers

Backup all your files / photos / music / movies / bookmarks to an external hard drive.

If your laptop has the original hard drive installed, it has a hidden partition with the Windows Installation files stored.

1. Reboot, and press F8 at the Dell logo. The Advanced Boot Options menu appears on the screen.
2. Select Repair Your Computer and press Enter.
3. Specify the language, and then click Next.
4. Log on to an administrator account, and then click OK.
5. Click Dell Factory Image Restore, then next.
6. Click Yes.
reformat hard drive and restore system software to factory condition.
Click next.
7. When the restore operation is completed, click Finish to restart the computer.


Unless there is a hardware issue or malware, your laptop should not be running so slowly.


Performing a factory reset will restore speeds to the same as when you bought the pc.

Be aware of one other thing. If your laptop is 5 yrs old, I'm guessing that restoring it to the factory default will re-install the original Dell OEM version of Windows Vista.

Windows will then need to update itself with 5 years of patches & security updates, which will take a while (and a good few reboots) to complete.

If it's Windows Vista, you can reduce this time by manually installing the Serice Packs Vista SP1 and Vista SP2 afterwards. Install SP1 before SP2.

Vista SP1 can be accessed here

Vista SP2 can be accessed here

You will probably need to download the 32-bit version (x86) rather than the 64-bit version (x64). You can verify this by clicking Start, Right-Click Computer or My Computer, and click Properties. Beside System Type, it will say either 32 bit or 64 bit.


Let us know if you need more info

xzanti

Dilallio thank you so much for that