Slow Laptop, C drive almost full, moving things to D Drive? how can I speed it up?

lesley2011

Hi everyone

Well my Toshiba C660 laptop is running slow, Windows 7. Have attached few images below.

I've moved most of my videos that I downloaded into Data D Drive and is it ok to move photos etc into Data D Drive as well? (sorry if this sounds silly)

Looks like C Drive is almost full. Should I do a disk clean up, just not sure what to do? Any ways of speeding this laptop up?

Gazpablo

I would buy an external 1tb or 2tb USB3 hard disk and transfer some files to this - prices between around £50 for 1tb to around £90 2tb. A Samsung 3tb will cost around £84. Alternatively, if you have more money I would invest in a NAS (network attached storage) but you would still need to backup a NAS.

maas

You can move all your own files to the D drive to free up space although I'm not convinced how much real-life speed increase you will see.

Unless you;ve got millions of photo's something else must be using all that space. Is there any videos/movies?

Also empty your recycle bin.

I find the biggest culprit of a slow computer is all the installed programs running in the background which have been installed over time and I usually just resolve it with a format-reinstall.

NiftyDigits

Have a look at what is filling your C: drive; WinDirStat

Gazpablo

Also I would open up Task Manager and then startup to see which services are running when the laptop starts up. You may find you can disable some software which is constantly running in the background. Often when installing software it will install itself to run in the background if not careful.

Lastly, I would download the free version of ccleaner (Google ccleaner); this excellent program cleans out a lot of dross.

lesley2011

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Have a look at what is filling your C: drive; WinDirStat

Does this help?

maas

It seems you've still got most of your movies on the C drive. How are you "moving" them?

lesley2011

Gazpablo wrote: »

Also I would open up Task Manager and then startup to see which services are running when the laptop starts up. You may find you can disable some software which is constantly running in the background. Often when installing software it will install itself to run in the background if not careful.

Lastly, I would download the free version of ccleaner (Google ccleaner); this excellent program cleans out a lot of dross.

Just couldn't find startup, is this what you meant Gazpablo? I done Malwarebtyes last night, should I do Ccleaner as well?

lesley2011

maas wrote: »

It seems you've still got most of your movies on the C drive. How are you "moving" them?

It's funny you say that maas I don't even know how I done that months ago lol there is quite alot of clips I've downloaded from youtube so not sure where I can put these or how I can get them into D Drive now?

NiftyDigits

You can create a folder on the drive for the video files.
Then you can go to the folder on the C: drive where the files are and then cut and paste them to the newly created folder.
Clicking on the Quick Time Movie option shown on your screenshot, will indicate to you where you have stored that 59.5GB of .mov video files.

Gazpablo

I would definitely use ccleaner, and regularly use it each day just before you close down. To get startup services and programs - search for msconfig.exe by clicking the Windows start button in the bottom left hand corner then type "msconfig.exe" in the search panel at the bottom where it says "search programs and files", double click msconfig.exe and start it up, then click "open task manager". When task manager opens up click the "start-up" tab along the top - this gives you then a list of programs and services running - anything you want to disable just right click the enabled item in the status column.

An alternative is to install ccleaner then click "tools" in the left hand panel, then "startup" which gives you details of running programs and services - then right click any unwanted services in the enabled column.

Finally, looking at your screen shot - I'm using Windows 8.1 but click services and processes and right click any program/service you don't want running but be careful not to disabled a vital Windows function.