Dell Inspiron is crawling.....

pigeonpie

We have a Dell Inspiron laptop, about 4 years old. It is getting more and more slow and cranky. We have AVG loaded (free ed) and I thought it was that, scanning and slowing everything down, but opened it while the chewing noises were going on and found it wasn't actually scanning.

How do I give it a boost? Someone suggested getting rid of AVG and replacing with AVAST? I'm not sure how to do this without the computer being vulnerable as it is going to take an age to remove AVG and then install AVAST (or anything else).
But it can take up to 5 mins to open the Google Chrome home page sometimes (not always) and it's driving us mad.

It has 2GB RAM. Would buying it another 2GB make any difference?
It is quite reliable as a computer, we know zero about matters techie so we don't want to do anything difficult or likely to cause tech issues, so are there any simple things we can do that may help please?

goaliehammy

Try running a defrag on the C drive.
also down load a registry scanner and scan the registry for errors.

debitcardmayhem

Download Avast and AVG remove tool, then shut down wireless . Remove AVG install Avast . Try Piriform defraggler if you feel it may help to sort out your disk. But it may be prudent to first do a quick scan with Malwarebytes (update it on the Update tabn first)

googler

It might help to know how much space is left on your hard drive, what Operating System you're using, and whether or not you've had a look at Task Manager to see if there's any obvious memory-hogging programs or processes.....

closed

replace avg with avast, full scan with malwarebytes after updating, and fix anything found before closing, post a hijackthis log. Defragging and registry scanning is a waste of time, the latter could make things worse.

Ultimately backing up your data to an external drive, and reinstalling windows from the factory restore partition is the fastest way of curing slow machines.

More ram will make no difference, and would be a waste of money.

charlie792

I had the exact same problem with my Inspiron around the same age. What OS are you running? Mine was running vista on 2GB which I believe was half the problem - Upgraded to Windows 7 a few months ago and its been a lot faster since...
On another note I was told my Inspiron can't be upgraded anymore than 2GB Ram

Hammyman

Running Vista on 2GB is not the problem. My gaming machine ran Vista and 2GB RAM. Win7 benchmarks almost identically with Windows Vista - the reason yours felt faster was due to a clean install.

To the OP...

Try cleaning all the fluff and detritus out of the CPU fan and heatsink.

pigeonpie

closed wrote: »

replace avg with avast, full scan with malwarebytes after updating, and fix anything found before closing, post a hijackthis log. Defragging and registry scanning is a waste of time, the latter could make things worse.

Ultimately backing up your data to an external drive, and reinstalling windows from the factory restore partition is the fastest way of curing slow machines.

More ram will make no difference, and would be a waste of money.

thanks to all above posters. The laptop's running XP. The slowness appears to be from a scan running (that's what it sounds like).
I will try to remove AVG and install AVAST but how do you download but not install AVAST to minimise the time left unprotected? Sorry am thick at these things
I don't know how to do an install of a newer version of Windows or how to restore to factory settings.
There really is a lot of hdd space left as it's OH's Dell and he only uses it for docs, not music or photos to any great extent.

Sam_Fallow

I use a Linux based system most of the time, but for my windows XP I use Glary Utilities. Download, install and run the one touch clean up. That should clear out some of the idle\redundant stuff.
Then look at the start up manager and see what programs you have running. Do you need them all?

Have a look, it's very easy to use.

googler

pigeonpie wrote: »

thanks to all above posters. The laptop's running XP. The slowness appears to be from a scan running (that's what it sounds like).
I will try to remove AVG and install AVAST but how do you download but not install AVAST to minimise the time left unprotected? Sorry am thick at these things
I don't know how to do an install of a newer version of Windows or how to restore to factory settings.
There really is a lot of hdd space left as it's OH's Dell and he only uses it for docs, not music or photos to any great extent.

Have you looked at Task Manager to see what processes and programs are running?

Hammyman

My bet is Norton as it comes pre-installed.