Laptop performance slow-down

Conology

Hi
My laptop performance has slowed down to a crawl recently and I need advice as to how to improve it.#
I use an Acer Aspire 5332, and there's about 1/3rd of the Hard drive still free, I also use an external hard-drive which has about 25% free and I use this for most of my stuff.
I use Photoshop CS5 for photography and each command is taking 10-20 minutes to perform. Photoshop "Efficiency " is down as low as 12% when asked to do basic things like Crop, Image Resize etc.

Can anyone advise me what to do to improve the performance ( in simple easy layman's language please )

Thank you

SenorCarlsberg

Download Advanced Systemcare utility and run some of the diagnostic and repair processes available on it. One good component of this is SmartRam which will automatically configure your RAM settings in the background speeding up laptop performance

Conology

Hi SenorCarlsberg
Thanks for the information.
I've downloaded the Advanced Systemcare and checked my Photoshop again.
The efficiency indicator has improved to 27%, but when I did the basic Cropping and Image resizing, the system just practically halted and I had to abort the Laptop by forcing a shut down otherwise I'd be waiting all day.
The Advanced Systemcare look for a payment of about €20.00 for an upgraded version. I'd be quite happy to pay it if I thought it would fix the problem but I don't think it will somehow.
Have you any comments or other suggestions.

Thanks again

Alanstrainor

Conology wrote: »

Hi SenorCarlsberg
Thanks for the information.
I've downloaded the Advanced Systemcare and checked my Photoshop again.
The efficiency indicator has improved to 27%, but when I did the basic Cropping and Image resizing, the system just practically halted and I had to abort the Laptop by forcing a shut down otherwise I'd be waiting all day.
The Advanced Systemcare look for a payment of about €20.00 for an upgraded version. I'd be quite happy to pay it if I thought it would fix the problem but I don't think it will somehow.
Have you any comments or other suggestions.

Thanks again

I wouldn't bother paying for that nonsense. In fact, i'd rather remove the free version too.

There is a cause for this, and adding software is not the solution.

How old is the laptop?
Does the fan turn on a lot when it slows?
Is it only when in photoshop that you've noticed the slowdown?

What version of Windows are you running? You should look at your startup programs and remove anything not necessary in there (google how to do this e.g "windows remove startup items").

bonzodog2

Remove fluff and replace thermal paste
Use a temperature monitoring program e.g RealTemp, to check if CPU is being 'downlocked'
Remove un-needed autostart programs
Add RAM if possible to max supported
Use a USB stick/SD card(fast, say class 10) for ReadyBoost
With Photoshop, work from one disk drive to another (e.g. source from local disk, save to external), the it won't be reading and writing to the same disk

Conology

Alanstrainor wrote: »

I wouldn't bother paying for that nonsense. In fact, i'd rather remove the free version too.

There is a cause for this, and adding software is not the solution.

How old is the laptop?
Does the fan turn on a lot when it slows?
Is it only when in photoshop that you've noticed the slowdown?

What version of Windows are you running? You should look at your startup programs and remove anything not necessary in there (google how to do this e.g "windows remove startup items").

I'm inclined to agree with you about the "Free version" - I might remove it as you suggest.
The laptop is about 5-6 yrs old - it has Windows Vista.
It's mainly when I'm in Photoshop that the problem occurs - and my photograph files are on my external hard-drive. I shoot in "Raw" and then convert to "Jpg" after some Photoshop work. The external hard-drive has about 1/3rd space still free. I know Photoshop software is a very large system but it was never as slow as this. It is now really really slow, but sometimes it takes a while to respond in standard email via Internet too.

Any further comments please ??

Paul_Hacket

As bonzodog stated, the thermals on your laptop are probably shot and thus your cpu is being throttled. This issue doesn't have anything to do with hard drive free space, and installing utilities like 'Advanced Systemcare' are a waste of time. They will do nothing for this issue and might eve make your machine slower.

The main problem is likely that the thermal paste between your cpu and its heatsink has dried out, and thus the cpu is running at a fraction of the speed it is capable of. Fixing this on most laptops is a total pain in the ass.

This is one of the advantages of Macs, their thermal systems are much better designed and they tend to last a lot longer. Five years is about as much as you can expect to get out of most windows laptops if you're using them at all intensively. Since your mainly using the machine for photography I'd consider looking for a good used MacBook or mac mini if you don't need the portability.

Conology

Paul_Hacket wrote: »

This is one of the advantages of Macs, their thermal systems are much better designed and they tend to last a lot longer..... Since your mainly using the machine for photography I'd consider looking for a good used MacBook or mac mini if you don't need the portability.

Q??
Would a "MacBook" be able to read my External Hard-drive where I keep my photos,
What model would you recommend ?
I would like to have a small light-weight Laptop/MacBook to carry around - capable of doing photoshop if possible,
I have a Samsung Galaxy S, but it does not take Photoshop or read my Ext.hard-drive files??

Thanks for the help again

Conology

Hi
I've removed as much of the Software programs that were unused for a while.
I'm left with 37GB space on the C drive and showing 247 GB used,
When I open Photoshop CS5 and do a few basic Crop/Image resizing the space remaining reduces to nearly zero.
I just wonder what other Programs can be using up the 247 GB space.
Any ideas please ??

Paul_Hacket

As I said above, this has nothing to do with free hard drive space - that would come into effect only when you're drive is almost totally full, which it isn't.

Yes, a Mac will read your external hard drive and files.,

Do you have an external monitor? The best setup for Photoshop/Lightroom on the cheap would be a basic 23" monitor (can be had for 100 Euro or so these days) plus something like a cheap Mac Mini. Try to find one with 8GB of Ram. If you buy one of the recent ones you can upgrade your external drive at some point to a thunderbolt connected SSD drive, which will literally be 10 times faster than what you have now.

If you really need a laptop for portability then I'd recommend just get a Macbook Air and connect it to an external display for editing per above. There are some good deals on refurbished models on Apple's UK store right now. The one below has plenty of RAM and a nice fast hard drive, it will be a huge improvement on your current machine:

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/G0NX1B/B/refurbished-macbook-air-14ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i5

Conology

Paul_Hacket wrote: »

Yes, a Mac will read your external hard drive and files.,

Do you have an external monitor? The best setup for Photoshop/Lightroom on the cheap would be a basic 23" monitor (can be had for 100 Euro or so these days) plus something like a cheap Mac Mini. Try to find one with 8GB of Ram. If you buy one of the recent ones you can upgrade your external drive at some point to a thunderbolt connected SSD drive, which will literally be 10 times faster than what you have now.

If you really need a laptop for portability then I'd recommend just get a Macbook Air and connect it to an external display for editing per above. There are some good deals on refurbished models on Apple's UK store right now. The one below has plenty of RAM and a nice fast hard drive, it will be a huge improvement on your current machine:

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/G0NX1B/B/refurbished-macbook-air-14ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i5

Hi Paul

Can I transfer the Photoshop software from my Laptop to the MacMini or MacBook Air, or do I need to purchase another Photoshop ??
Sounds like the Macboook Air is my best option as I'm travelling quite a bit.
Thank you very much for your help, much appreciated.

Paul_Hacket

If the software is legal (i.e. you have a license for it) you can just download the Mac version from adobe and use your license number on the new machine.

Conology

Hi Paul
I'll have to think about the Photoshop issue, not sure if I have licence details ??
Does MacBook come with Word, Exel, Powerpoint, etc too - or would that be extra also.

Thanks again for your help.

bonzodog2

https://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/ might be of use finding your PS licence info

myrscossie

Sounds like your hard drive could be failing very easy way of checking download and install CrystalDiskinfo if it says anything other than good it's time to replace your harddrive and if I were you i would replace it with an SSD which would give you the performance you're looking for.

Paul_Hacket

Your license number is found in one of the submenus inside Photoshop, generally "about Photoshop" or "License Info" or something like that depending on which version you have. No, Macs don't come with Office for free, you have to pay for that. They do have their own Mac equivalents of Office software pre-installed, software that's arguably better than the MS equivalent.

brianwalshcork

OP - don't let other posters be so quick to spend your money! Although replacing your laptop with a new one is an option and it would fix your performance issues, there are other options.

Overheating will cause your CPU to be throttled, and your PC will drag - it's not going to happen a short term. The usual cause is dust blocking the vents, which builds up over time - so while the slow downs might be frequent now, you would probably have encountered it at least a couple of times in the past when you pushed the laptop hard.

As regards thermal paste problems - I'm not saying that they don't happen - I just have never encountered this problem on any laptop I've come across - admittedly, I've only dealth with Dells. On desktop machines, any problems I've seen with heat transfer from the CPU to the heat sink have caused shutdown before the OS finishes loading.

I'd suggest that the first thing you do is to check if it is a thermal problem. Download speed fan from here:
http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php
Here's the direct link: http://www.almico.com/speedfan451.exe

The readings page will show your GPU and CPU temps. What are they showing when the computer is idle? (For reference, mine are currently showing CPU @ 55 deg. C & GPU at 69 - couple of browser windows open, and a long you tube video playing in the background.
What happens to the temps when you start cropping in Photoshop?


First think to check - (because it's easy) - - You mentioned above, that you've got 30 odd GB of disk space available, yet when cropping, this drops to 0? - Is this really true? If it is, it sounds to me that Photoshop is misbehaving - and either generating huge temp files, and/or using lots of memory and causing windows to page memory to disk increasing disk activity even more.
If Photoshop is eating all your disk space during a crop - then that needs to be fixed.

Regardless of whether it's overheating, or photoshop, ifyour laptop is 5-6 years old, it's time for some spring cleaning!

At the point, you could easily squeeze another 2 years out your current laptop, but installing the max memory, and swapping out your hard disk for an SSD, and re-installing your OS - it'll be crud free and better than new.

Also, since your on vista - it'd be a good idea to get off it! Vista's market share is less than 2% for a reason! Even XP is still at 17ish%.
Get your self up to Win 7 at least, (skip 8), and you'll be eligible for a free upgrade to windows 10 during the summer.

but you do need to establish if it's an overheating problem - swapping out your hard disk will be a wasted effort otherwise.

Conology

Hi again
Thanks for the advice,
My problem has gotten worse now, my own fault this tiime,
I opened up the laptop to see if i could blow some dust out but in the procrss of removing a connection i broke one of the brown pieces that holds in the keyboad connection to the main board, so now the laptop wont even turn on. The fan makes an effort to startup but just dies and nothing appears on the screen - just black, i have to remove the battery to shut it off. Looks like I've screwed it up properly this time.
My problem now is getting my files off of the hard drive and transferring to another external hard drive.
Can you advise me please.

myrscossie

This may or may not help as I think you damaged more than the ribbon connection here's a link to repair it.

To recover your files you want something like this put your harddrive in it and connect it to any computer that has a usb port.

bonzodog2

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/ACER-ASPIRE-5332-MOTHERBOARD-FAULTY-MBPGV02001-/131322211893?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item1e9369ee35
is a faulty 5332 mobo, maybe you could fix your KB connector. Maybe you don't fancy it now! (Commiserations for your damage btw...)

Disk caddys are easy to find and cheap

Conology

(Commiserations for your damage btw...)

Thanks - you're right I don't fancy it, but I'll take it someone who will know about it.
I feel a new MacBook pro coming on I think.