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Help please slow pc running vista.
Mik77
Posts: 119 Forumite
in Techie Stuff
Hi, (I know this has probably been asked dozens of times) but I'm hoping for some advice on speeding up my laptop.
It's a sony vaio running vista, it has a 180gb hard drive, (80 free), 2gb memory. I've use c-cleaner, spybot and adaware regularly, I've ran mbam and it's found nothing. I've disabled as many start up programmes as I think is possible.
But the pc is still 'very' slow to start up and regularly goes into the timer mode if I try to switch between windows, (interent and outlook for example), it's not used as a gaming machine, nor are there many resource heavy programmes being used on a regular basis, (occasionally a microsoft digital image photo editor, or itunes) other than that it's mainly an internet machine.
The majority of the hard drive is used up with photos/videos and itunes aprox 20 gig each. After doing a treesize search I notice there are 10gb used up in 'winsx', and 4gb in system 32. Can I reduce these as I'm sure they have increased over time.
Could the space used by the photo's etc, be slowing the machine down, or are there other tweaks I can do to the system to speed things up.?
It's a sony vaio running vista, it has a 180gb hard drive, (80 free), 2gb memory. I've use c-cleaner, spybot and adaware regularly, I've ran mbam and it's found nothing. I've disabled as many start up programmes as I think is possible.
But the pc is still 'very' slow to start up and regularly goes into the timer mode if I try to switch between windows, (interent and outlook for example), it's not used as a gaming machine, nor are there many resource heavy programmes being used on a regular basis, (occasionally a microsoft digital image photo editor, or itunes) other than that it's mainly an internet machine.
The majority of the hard drive is used up with photos/videos and itunes aprox 20 gig each. After doing a treesize search I notice there are 10gb used up in 'winsx', and 4gb in system 32. Can I reduce these as I'm sure they have increased over time.
Could the space used by the photo's etc, be slowing the machine down, or are there other tweaks I can do to the system to speed things up.?
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Comments
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the quickest way to speed up vista is to turn off the visual effects
you will see a massive speed boost.
im actually running a vaio here with a core duo @ 2.18 & 2gb of RAM and its really not enough RAM.
I'll be upping it to 4GB soon
the CPU copes fine but the RAM is its shortcoming0 -
what you need to do is open Computer, right-click on your hdd and select Properties. Select disk cleanup, let it calculate free space to be gained, then click the more options tab and click to clean up old restore points and shadow copies. This will take some time to calculate, especially if you've never done it before, so bear with it, then let it delete everything...
This will remove GBs of old [EMAIL="!!!!"]!!!![/EMAIL] from your drive !!!!!!!!!
Then download Defaggler from Filehippo.com, and give the hdd a good defragging.....you'll be amazed at the difference
......Gettin' There, Wherever There is......
I have a dodgy "i" key, so ignore spelling errors due to "i" issues, ...I blame Apple
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What programs have you got open in the System Tray?0
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the quickest way to speed up vista is to turn off the visual effects
you will see a massive speed boost.
im actually running a vaio here with a core duo @ 2.18 & 2gb of RAM and its really not enough RAM.
I'll be upping it to 4GB soon
the CPU copes fine but the RAM is its shortcoming
Hi, I don't know how to turn off the visual effects. Is there an option to do this?What programs have you got open in the System Tray?
The icons in the system tray are,- Spybot - SD resident
- Vaio update
- windows security alerts (this has a red cross over the shield)
- WLan (available wireless networks)
- Touch Pad
- AVG AntiVirus
- Comodo Firewall
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Hi, I don't know how to turn off the visual effects. Is there an option to do this?Right click on Computer, select "Properties" then chose "Advanced System Settings", and, on the "Advanced" tab, click the "Settings" button under the "Performance" section. Go to the "Visual Effects" tab; there you can choose options to enable or disable certain visual effects, very similar to the User Interface of Windows XP.
Significant performance gains in this build have been seen when using the "Adjust for best performance" option, although the benefit of the snappy new interface will be partially lost.
Note: Disabling certain Visual Effects will also disable Aero Glass effects.
selecting for performance turns off all the vista prettyness
however you can then turn on some of the features you want if you miss them
my vaio loses its volume control too!!!0 -
http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2007/10/19/10-simple-ways-to-speed-up-windows-vista/
http://www.cucirca.com/2007/05/03/how-to-speed-up-vista/
couple of links to possibly help speed things up0 -
The icons in the system tray are,
[*]Spybot - SD resident
Has been known to cause system slow downs.[*]Vaio update
Unneccesary, you can remove it entirely.[*]windows security alerts (this has a red cross over the shield)
What are the alerts? A red cross means something requires your attention.[*]WLan (available wireless networks)
[*]Touch Pad
Fine to leave.[*]AVG AntiVirus
You may wish to consider changing to Avast or Avira as AVG no longer has a great reputation, not to mention it can cause the system to slow down in it's default state.[*]Comodo Firewall
I harbour a very negative opinion on the effectiveness of software based firewalls, but I'm not entirely sure this is likely to be a major suspect in what's slowing your system down.0 -
Thanks again for the tips, I've done these, and hopefully after a defrag and restart it will be a bit quicker.
A message for Custardy? My Vaio is running at T5450 1.66 ghz. I've looked on crucial.com with regards to upgrading the memory, and it's suggested something about the windows home vista only allowing a max of 3gb, unless the service pack is upgraded.
I've checked the system and I've got service pack 1, with 32bit operating system. Is there any way to upgrade to 64bit operating system using firmware or windows update. (free of course)
I've just checked crucial.com here and it states the max ram my machine can take is 2048. Which is what it is running on link here
http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=VAIO%20VGN-NR21%20Series
unless anyone knows different of course.0 -
Might be worth going down windows 7 as its much better than Vista I have it on a 1.66ghz Amd dual core with 2gb and its flys0
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