My laptop's running slow

[stephec]

In fact it's slower than a snail on Valium!

When it was new I could fire it up from shutdown and be ready to go online in about a minute, now it will sometimes do that, but today it's spending about twenty minutes booting up before I can even get to log on.

Yesterday I had a box telling me the hard drive was damaged, warning me to preform a back up and then repair/replace the drive, today this seems to have vanished.

At the moment McAfee is running a full scan, but as usual I expect it to say it's found nothing.

Should I dump the McAfee and replace it with Windows security, or does the problem lie elsewhere?

 

[ColinJ]

It's a long shot, but this thread might be relevant!

(My laptop has been working perfectly ever since.)

 

[stephec]

Thanks Colin, just running process explorer now, but I haven't got a clue how to interpret what it's telling me.

 

[ColinJ]

Thanks Colin, just running process explorer now, but I haven't got a clue how to interpret what it's telling me.

See if you can spot a process that is gobbling up lots of CPU time?

 

[Pale Rider]

See if you can spot a process that is gobbling up lots of CPU time?

McAfee and other anti-virus programs are notoriously resource heavy.

Microsoft Security Essentials is one of the lightest, so installing that and dumping McAfee may help.

However, all the Windows laptops I've had seem to self-clog over time.

 

[stephec]

Is the time shown under the first column CPU?

If it is then what kind of times would be considered as long?

I've got system interrupts going upto 0.59, and macmagnet from MacAfee showing 1.61.

 

[ColinJ]

Is the time shown under the first column CPU?

If it is then what kind of times would be considered as long?

I've got system interrupts going upto 0.59, and macmagnet from MacAfee showing 1.61.

If it says CPU, then that is the one!

When my laptop was playing up, it was pretty much at 50% all the time, which was one of the 2 cores working flat out.

At the same time, interrupts were taking up way too much time. They are supposed to happen quickly, and then get out of the way again, so you should just see very short bursts of interrupt activity in fractions of a percent, or maybe a few percent. I was getting 10s of percent for extended periods so I knew that something iffy was going on.

You can click on the heading of each column to sort by that data, which makes it easier to spot the resource hogs. If you then highlight one row, Process Explorer keeps that in view, rather than jumping around all the time.

Other things to examine are I/O activity (disk accesses), network activity and memory usage. If you oook through the menus, you will find one which displays a lot of graphs which show what different parts of the system are up to. That can also show what each CPU core is up to.

 

[stephec]

If they're in percentages then there's a total CPU figure at the bottom that doesn't go above 5%.

 

[PeteXXX]

If it only runs really slowly when McAfee is scanning, you should be able to change the settings to allow it to use less (or more) resources. If the laptop is permanently slow, try a defrag or a registry cleaner.
Also, try going to 'Control Panel/Add remove programs' and see what you don't actually use anymore. It's amazing how much old and useless stuff is cluttering up computers.

 

[ColinJ]

If they're in percentages then there's a total CPU figure at the bottom that doesn't go above 5%.

Well that means your CPU is coping, so something else is hitting the endstops!

 

[ian turner]

install speedfan, run it (it may take a while) then click on the smart tab then on the perform an in depth online analysis button and see
if it throws up any issues as it did flag up damage to your harddrive.

 

[stephec]

Excuse the ignorance here, but what's a defrag or registry cleaner?

 

[Edge705]

There's some good advice in the posts above but being in the industry 25 years and watching how PC hardware has evolved I'm a big sceptic on any software being able to resolve issues such as yours automatically. Software mentioned above should be used diagnostically and not relied upon to resolve issues completely. IMO your issue appears to be that you laptop is clogged up and no amount or registry cleaning or pc cleaning is going to improve things not least without some considerable investigation. Quite possibly you do have an issue with the hard disk it’s a common cause of PCs/Laptops under performing.
Most commonly in slow PC's or laptops they hang or take a while to load programs the user gets frustrated and turns it off just as the read writes are being conducted which in turn will mess with the indexing and whilst the operating system, and indeed in some cases the laptop firmware, will offer some protection against read write disk indexing they too can sometimes fail. Unfortunately the x86 intel architecture (That's PC to me and you) has never evolved from the ram then hard disk way of executing programs and the symptoms you are experiencing are an all too common issue with PC's.
The only thing that's going to return your laptop to anywhere near what it was is a factory restore only then will you notice a considerable improvement (assuming your hard disk is not faulty). However even with a factory restore it will not be as new (assuming you have had it more than a year) but boy will you notice a significant difference.
Once factory restored install your anti-virus and firewall program, initiate windows update, and then begin to add your specific software. Monitor after each install if the laptop is getting slower expect a small degradation in start-up but not much.

One further thing I would be cautious of anything telling you the hard disk is damaged other than the very first start-up screen (before windows starts) Only the first start up screen when it performs the BIOS checks and you are informed the hard disk has failed would I take more serious because this is checking your PC out at a much lower level than the operating system. If you get a hard disk message in windows it will probably be a read write error or something of the sorts or your software program might report an error writing to the hard disk. There are some internet sites which show popups telling you your hard disk is damaged that's more likely a scam to entice you to buy some third party useless software.

Lastly make sure your laptop has an operating system it was designed for don't make the mistake of putting windows 7 on a laptop designed for windows vista or XP or if you do expect a little some reduction in performance.

Be sure you back up your data folders before you factory restore as the factory restore will most likely perform a reformat of the hard disk

 

[stephec]

I've got a back up that I made yesterday on USB, plus a DVD with a windows system restore on it.

Is it just a case of sticking the DVD in and running it?

 

[Edge705]

If the DVD is a fresh install of windows then great shove it in and follow the prompts (assuming you have your exisitng personal files backed up to usb) However most laptops have a factory restore option where you press one of the "F" keys on startup These laptops have a hidden partition on the laptop which stores the factory reset OS files but in some cases may insist on the original DVD that came with the laptop

The system restore you have (and Im guessing) may well be a simple backup of the registry hives and other important files Im guessing In your situation possibly may not help your speed problems.

If your DVD is a windows DVD or original Factory Restore DVD then you can use that to restore your laptop. One thing to note if its a factory restore DVD (came with your laptop) It will likely complete a clean reinstall automaticaly including the drivers.

If your DVD is a windows installation DVD you can initiate the factory reinstall yourself but do not choose the default steps instead choose the custom installation and follow the instruction to delete the partition. With this method you may or may not have to reinstall drivers for your laptop but thats a simple procedure and in any case windows will offer a default driver which will at least give you a screen to navigate

Just to make you aware if you do not backup your personal files you will have great difficulty getting them back once the laptop has been repartitioned.