Computer running really slow and crashing

penny_crayon

Our PC is using windows 7. It has recently started running really slowly and crashing whenever you try to do anything. I'm embarrassed to admit that, despite being a well educated and reasonably intelligent person I have no clue about computers really. My husband has spent many hours attempting to fix it, but I have had no luck getting him to tell me what he is actually doing to try to fix it, apart from holding down the start button every time it crashes and restarting it (he reckons this will fix it?!?). I'm pretty sure he has not much clue as to what to do.....

Can anyone give me a simple list of things that I could do to try and fix it myself? Computer is set to defragment every week already, and we have AVG antivirus (free one).

Also, it's getting to the point where I really want to pay someone to get it sorted, as it's incredibly frustrating only having my phone for internet etc. But DH says it's not cost effective to do this (ie we should just get a new computer?!?)

Please help!

maas

To be honest this could be a million things. When you say "crashing" what do you mean?

Blue screen of death
Power goes off
Error message
Screen Freezes

As with most of these type of threads my initial feeling is to simply back up all your files (spreadsheets, music etc) and just format/restore it. Takes about an hour and your PC will be back to the way it was when you first bought it, nice and fast. But there could be less "thorough" ways to fix it.

Whats the make and model of the PC

penny_crayon

Sorry, it's an Acer Aspire

It takes ages to load up, then whenever you try to open anything eg internet, it just starts not responding, that little blue circle thing keeps going round?

Not sure how to back stuff up if nothing loads properly?

maas

A few things you can try;

Update windows
windowsupdate.microsoft.com

Run malwarebytes free trial and do a scan to see if there's any unwanted programs causing issues
https://www.malwarebytes.org

If you're having problems getting anything to load or access websites, try booting you laptop into safe mode.
Restart laptop and repeatedly press F8 until a menu appears. Pick option "Safe mode with networking"

This will load a basic version of windows which should let you get to your files and load programs.

---

Just curious how your laptop got to this state. Was it a sudden '1 day everything stopped working' or was it a gradual decline in laptop performance.

I'm definitely edging towards advising to simply restore it back to when you first bought it, but you'll need to back up all your files first.

penny_crayon

We have had some problems in the past, but they always seemed to get sorted the next day? We did a system restore once but now apparently the computer hasn't been backing up properly so we can't do this? We have an external hard drive for backing up, DH thinks it's broken?

It seems to work fine in safe mode with networking?

Daz2009

Go into the start menu,click on run,enter "msconfig",then click on startup.
Take a screenshot of that page and then post it ( a link to it preferably ) here so we can see what programs are running that might cause your computer to run slow

maas

As Daz suggests run msconfig and post a screenshot here of the startup page (multiple screenshots if there's a long list (i.e. a scroll bar)).


The fact that when in safe mode the laptop works fine indicates that there are program(s) running in the background causing the problems when you load windows normally.

NiftyDigits

Full model number? Have you backed up your important data? If it works in Safe Mode....back up from there.

Armorica

DH may not be much more computer literate...

msconfig is a must

is it only with one internet browser - e.g. internet explorer or is it with others like chrome (which are generally better behaved)

what is the pc used for e.g. is lots of software installed on it
do you have memory (storage and RAM) left?

penny_crayon

DH is currently trying to update windows and it's taking ages, so I can't do the msconfig thing. Will try that tomorrow, how can I link to a screen shot?

penny_crayon

Where would the model number be? DH has uninstalled loads if stuff, even stuff I need! Mainly use the computer (it's a desktop btw) for Internet, storing pics and videos etc, word and excel, nothing too complex