Who do computer slow down when old?

jenny smith

Who do computers slow down as they age? I have sony vaio laptop with 32 bit vista SP2. 2GB RAM

it is 9 years old but was always well looked after. Never had virus or adware or any dodgy 'free' program.

Now it is very slow to boot and slow to open programs when they are clicked. Windows was reinstalled once, a year ago. Do processors wear out? Is there any program I can get to test the processor. Would it be because newer programs need more RAM? That would not slow the boot time though would it?

bpmurray

The simple answer is because you're running Windows. For some reason, Windows seems to clog itself and the boot process gets slower and slower. Try doing a clean install of Windows 10 and you'll see that it has suddenly gotten much faster. Better still, install Linux and it'll scream along.

demanufactured

Hard drive mostly...
That's the part that wears down on every machine...if you want to keep it going for a bit longer....the best upgrade would be a solid state drive....it will be like a brand new machine.

maki

Hard drives don't actually slow down with age (well they technically do if they start to remap a lot of bad sectors), but it's not something you're going to notice.

The biggest effect is simply software. As time passes, software gets more complex and starts to demand more resources. Running modern software which expects modern hardware on an old machine is always going to run slower.

Atlantic Dawn

Operating system and applications need more resources as they are updated with newer versions and addons, also lots of redundant drivers and patches remain on the computer slowing it down.

Best solution would be a fresh instal of Windows and replacing the hard drive with a solid state drive. If you add more RAM that will also increase performance but the more you upgrade it trying to make it faster the cheaper it will be to just buy a replacement laptop. RAM on some laptops is easy to upgrade and might only require one screw be opened on the underneath of the laptop to slot in more RAM, on others it can require taking they keyboard out to access it or may be soldered to the motherboard and not replaceable.

coylemj

I'm not sure that an SSD would be a sensible economic investment for a 9 year old machine. OP's machine has only 2GB RAM, that will severely curtail any performance benefits she will get from an SSD drive. If she can get a cheap RAM upgrade, that would be worth trying but I wouldn't invest in an SSD for a machine that old.

An SSD will make a huge difference in bootup time but after that there may not be much difference in performance if RAM is the bottleneck.

Tenshot

Some common slow-down causes:

Hard drive - already mentioned, but on old laptops, there's an excellent chance the drive has been subjected to a few knocks and bangs while operating. If there are enough bad blocks spread across the surface, the drive can still function but will spend most of its time recovering data from its backup area, which slows things down a lot.

Replacing it with an SSD, or even just a normal spinning drive, will fix this. Given the age of your laptop though, it may have an EIDE drive in which case replacing it will be too expensive to be worthwhile. If it's a SATA drive, a decent SSD replacement will only cost €60-70.

CPU slowdown - Not always easy to fix on a laptop, but most modern CPUs will speed-throttle to avoid overheating if they can't keep cool enough. The most common cause of this is dust on the fan and the surrounding vents. If you have some compressed air available, blow it into the cooling vents and you may dislodge some dust (best done with the system turned off off). Better is to open it up and clean it properly. Using one of the free CPU temperature monitors is a good way to see if this is happening to your system - if it's constantly running at a hot temperature, even when idle (hot being 60'C or above) then it may be running slowly.

Memory - Vista is not as memory hungry as modern Windows, as long as you don't have lots of anti-virus stuff running, but 2 GB is still very tight. If possible, upgrade to at least 4 GB -- Crucial's EU website has a good free System Scanner that will tell you exactly what sort of memory your mainboard supports and how much you can add.

Anti-virus - If you're running one of the third-party anti-virus tools like McAfee, it's probably imposing significant load on your system. Uninstall it entirely and you should see a noticeable speedup. Standard Windows Defender + sitting behind your ISP-supplied home Internet router will protect you from most things out there.

Temp Folder - often overlooked, this can build up over time. When a program needs to create a temporary file, it has to generate a unique filename and if there are many thousands of temp files already, this can become extremely slow. Press WindowsKey+R to open the run Dialog, then run %TEMP% to open the Temp folder. Remove any files older than a month.

I have a 2 GB Sony Vaio from 2004 that I used as my main travel laptop until about a year ago. It still works pretty well, even under Windows 7, because I kept it clean and up to date. No reason yours shouldn't too.

jenny smith

Thank everyone. http://www.hdsentinel.com/ says hard drive is fine
Title should be why do computer slow not who, sorry

riclad

Windows collects loads of temp files ,everyday at some point these need to be deleted .windows slows down if the drive is full ,there should be at least
4gig of free space at all time,on drive c.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/230573-45-safe-remove-files-windows-temp

ccleaner gets rid of all temp files and its free to download.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/ccleaner_slim.html
If you have lots of programs installed some load into ram all the time ,
eg roxio disc burner ,whether you intend to use them or not.
Maybe ugrade to 4gig ram ,you,ll find windows runs at least 3 times faster.
I,m using an old dual core cpu 2.oghz 4 gig ram laptop
press cntrl alt del , it loads task manager ,it shows all the programs running in ram.

PC don,t really wear out or slow except hardrives last 4-5 years if used daily .
I Have an old pc ,hp 10 years old it works perfect ,it runs linux in 2gig ram.its very fast and its silent .
i put a new hardrive in it ,the old 60gig drive stopped working.
Someday i might put 4gig ram into it .

Go to my computer ,right click hardrive c , propertys,
its say drive 300gig etc free space x gig.
the best thing is to have 6-10 free at least on drive c;/

jenny smith

Tenshot wrote: »

Some common slow-down causes:

Hard drive - already mentioned, but on old laptops, there's an excellent chance the drive has been subjected to a few knocks and bangs while operating. If there are enough bad blocks spread across the surface, the drive can still function but will spend most of its time recovering data from its backup area, which slows things down a lot.

Replacing it with an SSD, or even just a normal spinning drive, will fix this. Given the age of your laptop though, it may have an EIDE drive in which case replacing it will be too expensive to be worthwhile. If it's a SATA drive, a decent SSD replacement will only cost €60-70.

CPU slowdown - Not always easy to fix on a laptop, but most modern CPUs will speed-throttle to avoid overheating if they can't keep cool enough. The most common cause of this is dust on the fan and the surrounding vents. If you have some compressed air available, blow it into the cooling vents and you may dislodge some dust (best done with the system turned off off). Better is to open it up and clean it properly. Using one of the free CPU temperature monitors is a good way to see if this is happening to your system - if it's constantly running at a hot temperature, even when idle (hot being 60'C or above) then it may be running slowly.

Memory - Vista is not as memory hungry as modern Windows, as long as you don't have lots of anti-virus stuff running, but 2 GB is still very tight. If possible, upgrade to at least 4 GB -- Crucial's EU website has a good free System Scanner that will tell you exactly what sort of memory your mainboard supports and how much you can add.

Anti-virus - If you're running one of the third-party anti-virus tools like McAfee, it's probably imposing significant load on your system. Uninstall it entirely and you should see a noticeable speedup. Standard Windows Defender + sitting behind your ISP-supplied home Internet router will protect you from most things out there.

Temp Folder - often overlooked, this can build up over time. When a program needs to create a temporary file, it has to generate a unique filename and if there are many thousands of temp files already, this can become extremely slow. Press WindowsKey+R to open the run Dialog, then run %TEMP% to open the Temp folder. Remove any files older than a month.

I have a 2 GB Sony Vaio from 2004 that I used as my main travel laptop until about a year ago. It still works pretty well, even under Windows 7, because I kept it clean and up to date. No reason yours shouldn't too.

mine is clean and up to date. I would clean temp folder regularly. I have a short cut to it on desktop. I will check the CPU temp, that i an interesting point.

I am not going to buy an SSD, might get some RAM.Far as i remember it is easy to install. I use Norton AV and it always worked fine on my xp/vista and now 7 pc's

riclad

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/how-defrag-in-windows-7-8-10-3493358/
the data on the drive becomes fragmented ,as small files are deleted ,
creating random empty sectors all over the place.
this means the hardrive slows down as it has to travel more to acess data .
Did you check the hardrive is not full or 99 per cent full.?
my experience of norton is it uses loads of ram,and slows down windows ,i use avg free antivirus .
Also going up to 4gig ram is cheap and easy to do.
windows makes 3 or 4 folders full of temp files , you can open the folders or just let ccleaner delete the files .

jenny smith

riclad wrote: »

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/how-defrag-in-windows-7-8-10-3493358/
the data on the drive becomes fragmented ,as small files are deleted ,
creating random empty sectors all over the place.
this means the hardrive slows down as it has to travel more to acess data .
Did you check the hardrive is not full or 99 per cent full.?
my experience of norton is it uses loads of ram,and slows down windows ,i use avg free antivirus .
Also going up to 4gig ram is cheap and easy to do.
windows makes 3 or 4 folders full of temp files , you can open the folders or just let ccleaner delete the files .

I disagre. Norton always runs good for me .I consider avg most overrated. It is defragged. it is quite full but not 99%

srsly78

Getting rid of Norton = faster pc.

Reinstall operating system (get windows 7 or later) - upgrade to 4gb ram.

If you don't rely on windows-specific software then just install linux.

jenny smith

srsly78 wrote: »

Getting rid of Norton = faster pc.

Reinstall operating system (get windows 7 or later) - upgrade to 4gb ram.

If you don't rely on windows-specific software then just install linux.

i disagree and am not getting into norton bashing and certainly not for avg crap

Jodotman

Basically Windows Updates , Newer Software been released requiring more CPU and RAM and Norton would be a fine example of this, websites are becoming more heavy over the last 9 years which will have a bigger impact on older slower systems, especially with multiple tabs open.
I wouldn't say your laptop would be able to play 720P video.

If your just using office and browsing the web just add an extra 2GB of Ram. Probably be got for a tenner or less.

And yes get rid of Norton and just use Microsoft Security essentials which isn't a resource hog.

ItHurtsWhenIP

Win10 will do nothing for it. I've rolled back Win10 on 6 and 7 year old laptops that had 4 GB RAM and were being crippled by Win10.

On a 9 year old machine, I would suggest it owes you nothing twice over.

An SSD would give noticeable improvement, but may be a false economy given the age of the machine. Same is true for RAM.

OP, if it's been defrragged and cleaned and it's still running like a dog, I think it's time for a letter to the North Pole.

5rtytry56

Windows 7 is best bet OP. Theres a way to get a dell windows 7 installation dvd, if you take a look at the windows 10 thread in this forum.

jenny smith

ItHurtsWhenIP wrote: »

Win10 will do nothing for it. I've rolled back Win10 on 6 and 7 year old laptops that had 4 GB RAM and were being crippled by Win10.

On a 9 year old machine, I would suggest it owes you nothing twice over.

An SSD would give noticeable improvement, but may be a false economy given the age of the machine. Same is true for RAM.

OP, if it's been defrragged and cleaned and it's still running like a dog, I think it's time for a letter to the North Pole.

i agree, i am just curious why they slow down. It runs very fast in safe mode but it would wouldn't it as there is not much running

jenny smith

Jodotman wrote: »

Basically Windows Updates , Newer Software been released requiring more CPU and RAM and Norton would be a fine example of this, websites are becoming more heavy over the last 9 years which will have a bigger impact on older slower systems, especially with multiple tabs open.
I wouldn't say your laptop would be able to play 720P video.

If your just using office and browsing the web just add an extra 2GB of Ram. Probably be got for a tenner or less.

And yes get rid of Norton and just use Microsoft Security essentials which isn't a resource hog.

it plays HD 1080 if that is what you mean. It plays files from a DSLR which are 1080 HD in VLC

riclad

Switch off norton ,you,ll find the pc runs faster,
I,ve done this on 3 pcs, with 2gig ram, windows 7,
It may work fine on 4gig ram, but i don,t care avg antivirus free version works fine
for me.
I think norton antivirus is designed for pcs with 4 gig ram at least.
When i remove norton ,i feel as if the pc is 2-3 times faster ,and i dont get
constant pop ups, ugrade to pro version .i Just read about windows 10 ,
theres seems to be constant problems with its updates ,they happen
any time, theres no way of stopping the update taking over the pc.
I know you can switch off the update service ,or theres more options
in windows 10 enterprise .
I never used it ,i thought windows 10 was supposed to be fast .

riclad

simple answer ,windows constantly makes temp files all over the drive c ,in various folders .
And fills up the drive , if you are not using a program or a game uninstall it,
in 2016 ,2gig ram is really abit too small to run windows ,
Add in another 2 to make it 4gig ram.run cCLEANER a free program to free up space .
MY PC is 3X faster when norton is removed.i used avg free antivirus.

beauf

jenny smith wrote: »

i agree, i am just curious why they slow down. It runs very fast in safe mode but it would wouldn't it as there is not much running

What do you use it for and what is the spec of the machine.

I've two laptops both 10yrs old one with 2 gb of ram and the other with 3.5gb of ram. I put an SSD in both of them and both run windows 10 fine. I upgraded the WiFi on both to WiFi N. One has a gfx card and therefore is a good bit faster the other with only has basic graphics. For example it runs 1080p fine the other really only can manage 720p. But for office and web stuff it's fine.

Vista I always found slow. It also isn't optimised for a SSD.

A modern i3 would be a lot faster and can be got cheap so unless your old machine has a great screen, or keyboard, or you just want to keep it wouldn't say upgrading a machine that old makes much financial sense.

Even if a bought a new machine I'd put a SSD into it. Makes a night and day difference. Or a hybrid drive.

riclad

I Have a hp pc 10 years old,cpu 2.0 ghz, dual core , 2gig ram running linux,i see no sign of it slowing down, at all.

jenny smith

beauf wrote: »

What do you use it for and what is the spec of the machine.

I've two laptops both 10yrs old one with 2 gb of ram and the other with 3.5gb of ram. I put an SSD in both of them and both run windows 10 fine. I upgraded the WiFi on both to WiFi N. One has a gfx card and therefore is a good bit faster the other with only has basic graphics. For example it runs 1080p fine the other really only can manage 720p. But for office and web stuff it's fine.

Vista I always found slow. It also isn't optimised for a SSD.

A modern i3 would be a lot faster and can be got cheap so unless your old machine has a great screen, or keyboard, or you just want to keep it wouldn't say upgrading a machine that old makes much financial sense.

Even if a bought a new machine I'd put a SSD into it. Makes a night and day difference. Or a hybrid drive.

surfing email watch odd film on vlc. Not into upgrading it much. In fact since i got a new mouse it is a bit faster to open programs and surf. Maybe the old mouse clicks were not registering all the time. Boot up is still slow though

or you just want to keep it

I do. Not getting SSD though

Specs

Joeface

If the boot up is still slow you can remove some stuff from the start up that you are not actually using.

Example been itunes or other programs that getting added to starting with windows. If your not using it straight away then there is no need for it to be loading.

run msconfig.exe and turn off some of this stuff , it will help with boot.

Johnboy1951

jenny smith wrote: »

surfing email watch odd film on vlc. Not into upgrading it much. In fact since i got a new mouse it is a bit faster to open programs and surf. Maybe the old mouse clicks were not registering all the time. Boot up is still slow though
I do. Not getting SSD though

Specs

If you want a faster boot time then get an SSD, else put up with the boot time.

A clean install, from a source without any 'added junk' will help greatly. Don't use the OEM install media (or recovery).

Better yet, as has been suggested, for your posted use

surfing email watch odd film on vlc

try putting Linux on it. It is well capable of most uses and does not require resource-sucking anti virus software.

mach1982

A computer hard drive is like toy blocks , when you get it new all the blocks are in order , over time the block are rearranged and it takes the computer longer to find their location, also most old come hard drives are mechanical and the parts will fail.You can do a defrag on the disk ie but blocks back in order, but over time they get unorder again.

beauf

jenny smith wrote: »

surfing email watch odd film on vlc. Not into upgrading it much. In fact since i got a new mouse it is a bit faster to open programs and surf. Maybe the old mouse clicks were not registering all the time. Boot up is still slow though
I do. Not getting SSD though

Specs

If you don't want to upgrade it, then theres not much we can suggest.

Modern websites and media, movies etc, require more powerful computers these days. Unless you have decent CPU in that, its going to struggle.

I upgraded one of mine from a 1.5Ghz Core2Duo to a 2.4Ghz and that along with a SSD has made it a decent machine again. Until I did that it was starting to be too slow to use.

beauf

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

If you want a faster boot time then get an SSD, else put up with the boot time.

A clean install, from a source without any 'added junk' will help greatly. Don't use the OEM install media (or recovery).

Better yet, as has been suggested, for your posted use

try putting Linux on it. It is well capable of most uses and does not require resource-sucking anti virus software.

The SSD is useful for more than just boot up times. It helps any applications that caches to the hard drive. And web browsers do that a lot.

Linux won't help if the hardware is simply too slow. Old laptops are too slow for video decoding or to make use of hardware acceleration in browsers. You can help with a better CPU and the SSD. Changing the OS won't really help with the fundamental performance of things like web speed and video play back.

Johnboy1951

beauf wrote: »

The SSD is useful for more than just boot up times. It helps any applications that caches to the hard drive. And web browsers do that a lot.

Linux won't help if the hardware is simply too slow. Old laptops are too slow for video decoding or to make use of hardware acceleration in browsers. You can help with a better CPU and the SSD. Changing the OS won't really help with the fundamental performance of things like web speed and video play back.

It will help by not requiring resource-hogging anti-virus applications and scanning etc. which is especially noticeable on slower hardware.
Also it is easy to 'tune' the OS to the minimum required for the use-case.

allybhoy

Simple things to try.... click run then type msconfig, check the startup tab and disable pretty much everything in here, then click the services tab, click to hide microsoft services and again, disable any items that you feel are non-essential. Give a reboot and see how its performing.. Next open up system properties > Advanced > Performance. Click the radio button, adjust for best performance and see if you like the UI, if you can live without the likes of Aero Peek i would reccomend leaving it disabled if you only have 2GB of RAM. I also agree with other users that you should remove Norton but thats up to you...

riclad

On that pc ,linux mint will be 2 -3 times faster ,
no point in buying an ssd ,put in another 4gig ram.
Get linux mint 7 32bit version .
switch off animation , effects ,in windows ,Performance settings .

beauf

Setting up windows securely, and picking a resource light antivirus, is a very simply task. As is keeping it running well.
Anyone who can run Linux and trouble shoot it, is not struggling with keeping a simple system like Windows working. Its just not a credible argument. Saying you want to use Linux for other reasons, is perfectly justifiable, not every one like Windows.

That's not the issue. The issue is the old hardware is fundamentally missing the hardware to run modern video codecs and tasks efficiently. Which is why your multicore mobile phone can playback 1080p video and youtube no problem but your old Laptop which might actually have a higher cpu power can't.

The other issue is that modern OS'es cache a lot to the hard drive. Windows 8 and 10 hit the hard drive very hard. Which is why a SSD makes such a difference to how a system feels. Even chrome does this with its " Prefetch resources to load pages more quickly" setting.

beauf

Theres plenty of valid reasons to run linux. But pixie dust isn't one of them.

riclad

adding in another 4gig ram is cheaper and will speed up the os by a factor of 3,
ssd,s speed up the bootup process ,but ssds are smaller and more expensive than a standard sata drive .
just putting in an ssd into a pc with only 2gig ram is almost pointless,
I Won,t use a pc with less than 4gig ram.

the_syco

WINSXS folder expands overtime, giving you less room.

=-=

If you feel able, take apart laptop, and hover the dust out.

Installing a cheap SSD will give it a new lease of life, making it faster, and also making the battery last a bit longer (due to lack of moving parts).

beauf

riclad wrote: »

adding in another 4gig ram is cheaper and will speed up the os by a factor of 3,
ssd,s speed up the bootup process ,but ssds are smaller and more expensive than a standard sata drive .
just putting in an ssd into a pc with only 2gig ram is almost pointless,
I Won,t use a pc with less than 4gig ram.

On my 2GB machine I don't run out of RAM. More Ram would have no effect. For light use, opening only one or two apps at time or only a couple of browser tabs. The caching is often hard coded to the HD. Even with 16GB of RAM it would still cache to the HD.

If you are running out of RAM then you need RAM. It will have a decent effect on a machine.

More is always a good idea. But Ram for an old machine is dead money. The SSD can use again in the next machine.

Also 32bit OS and Applications use less RAM in general. If you are using 64bit OS and Apps you will need 4GB.

FanadMan

If you've got a spare SD card or USB pendrive, you could try Readyboost. Found it to help a little on older machines.

http://www.howtogeek.com/123780/htg-explains-is-readyboost-worth-using/

bonzodog2

FanadMan wrote: »

If you've got a spare SD card or USB pendrive, you could try Readyboost. Found it to help a little on older machines.

http://www.howtogeek.com/123780/htg-explains-is-readyboost-worth-using/

Indeed. Needs a fast one though. Drive properties will test it, I'd suggest a class 10 card

FanadMan

bonzodog2 wrote: »

Indeed. Needs a fast one though. Drive properties will test it, I'd suggest a class 10 card

I used a class 10 SD card in an old slow Win 7 machine - made a big difference. Upgraded to an SSD - Readboost won't work cos SSD is faster than the SD card!

But def recommend OP tries it - most people have spare SDs anyway.

jenny smith

allybhoy wrote: »

Simple things to try.... click run then type msconfig, check the startup tab and disable pretty much everything in here, then click the services tab, click to hide microsoft services and again, disable any items that you feel are non-essential. Give a reboot and see how its performing.. Next open up system properties > Advanced > Performance. Click the radio button, adjust for best performance and see if you like the UI, if you can live without the likes of Aero Peek i would reccomend leaving it disabled if you only have 2GB of RAM. I also agree with other users that you should remove Norton but thats up to you...

Done all this. Also increased the paging file which was below recommended
But i discovered the CPU is 90 degrees C :eek:

listermint

Has the OP done these 2 things

1) clean install of windows (clean!)
2) turn of Norton

As advised several times.

Because they will and are magic silver bullets to the issue. Any of the other wishwashy advise about stopping services and checking the health of the harddrive are not the source of the problem here. It is the OS.

??

riclad

i have old toshiba laptop 2gig ram , i bought dell laptop 64bit cpu 4gig windows 7 ram,it feels 3 times faster than the old laptop.
got it on adverts.ie
ram can be bought in cex see www,cex.ie its very cheap,buy 2gig or 4gig.
i can have 10 plus chrome tabs open without slowing down.

beauf

jenny smith wrote: »

Done all this. Also increased the paging file which was below recommended
But i discovered the CPU is 90 degrees C :eek:

Machine might also be full of dust.

TBH with a machine this old it might be none or all of things advised so far.

riclad

http://eu.crucial.com/eur/en/systemscanner
This scans your pc ,tells you exactly what ram you have ,
eg pc2 ddr2 1500 and tells you what ram you can buy,
eg one 2gig or 1 4gig dimm, or
maybe one 2gig dimm if one slot is empty.
is your ram is ddr2 1500 ,theres no point in buying ddr2 1000 .
As it,ll slow down your laptop.
most laptops have ddr2 or ddr3 with 2 slots full .
older laptops eg dual core use ddr2 .
64bit cpu in a laptop means you can add more than 4gig ram.
32bit cpu laptop max ram it can detect is 4gig .