Laptop Painfully Slow

wuzzypoo

Hi,

Could anyone give me some advice on the below as it's driving me mad!

Problem:
I have had my laptop for 3 years, quite a good spec etc etc, but it is painfully slow in everything and always has been. It takes about 20-30 mins from when I switch it on until I can use it. The pages take forever to load. I can't run more than 1 application at once or else it freezes and wont do anything. Even with just 1 application open if I try to move the page up or down it takes ages, freezes etc.

Things Ive done to try sort it:
I've got an external hard drive and moved most of my files onto that. I've run the spyware/virus things on this site, brings up nothing.

I have Virgin wireless broadband, this has made no difference from when I had the plug in type broadband. I used to have the Virgin security system which I paid £3ish a month for but cancelled that ages ago, not made any difference.

I would be very grateful if someone could suggest if there sounds to be a virus, problem etc and how I could sort it. Ive tried to put as much info as I can to see if someone else has had this problem and what they did. Could it be the broadband, or the basic Virgin security thing (firewall etc)?

Thanks

Wuzz

davester

what software is starting up? what operating system and the specifications of your computer (processor,RAM etc).

Trinitrotoluene

If the symptoms are as severe as you suggest then it is either:

1) One process taking over the entire PC. Hit CTRL ALT DEL and goto task manager and performance. Report back the contents (how much CPU is running in percent and what memory usage is).

2) The Laptop is overheating. Run this, http://www.gtopala.com/download/siw.exe goto sensors and report back temperatures here.

Browntoa

did you remove the old virgin antivirus ??

download this

http://www.filehippo.com/download_hijackthis/

do a scan and produce a log file , then post that in your next reply

gives us a mine of information about whats running

closed

reinstall windows from the restore partition or disc

davester

but if his computer is old then RAM could be the issue as in lack of it. XP SP2 to SP3 really hit my old laptop till it had a RAM upgrade

closed

A Clean install of XP with avast and sp3 runs in less than 128Meg of ram, if it's 3 years old it's likely to have much more than that, and possibly vista.

davester

thats all well and good but I don't think the OP just runs windows and avast. And by my own computer with 448MB the transition from SP2 to SP3 was a noticable drop in boot up and overall speed.

closed

I would imagine there was another reason, there is hardly any difference in ram usage between 2 and 3.

All guesswork until the op comes back.

davester

closed wrote: »

I would imagine there was another reason, there is hardly any difference in ram usage between 2 and 3.

All guesswork until the op comes back.

Like the SP3 interaction with the other software installed on start up.

Trinitrotoluene

The symptoms he describes are not synonymous with "not enough RAM"