Slow Computer

[disney junky]

My computer at home, a dell laptop, about four years old has grown painfully slow. What should I do? Should I take it somewhere and have it "cleaned out" or is there a program I can purchase which will do the same thing? Has anyone else had success with a similar situation?

 

[bananda]

have you done a virus check and defragmenting? that works with mine (a toshiba)

we had dells at school and they were pretty slow. it may have been that we were all loging on at the same time though.

 

[rie'smom]

You can also do a disk cleanup in addition to the fragmenting. My SIL's computer was running slow and after I did the cleanup, it was back to normal. It did take a while because there was so much junk to clean.

 

[disney junky]

You can also do a disk cleanup in addition to the fragmenting. My SIL's computer was running slow and after I did the cleanup, it was back to normal. It did take a while because there was so much junk to clean.

is that something that's already on my computer or is that a separate program.

 

[BunsenH]

is that something that's already on my computer or is that a separate program.

Yes. Go to AllPrograms....Accessories....System Tools. The Disk Cleanup and Defrag are there.

 

[bicker]

The most success that we've had involved replacing the hard drive, and using the original hard drive as a secondary storage device (so you can access the data on it). This is better than cleaning up the original hard drive, because when you start fresh you are absolutely assured that you haven't left anything behind that could be degrading performance (until you put MORE crap on your computer). The down-side, of course, is that you have to install the operating system again (which is really difficult if you don't have the original discs, or the OS install image on your original hard drive), and you have to reinstall all your applications again (which is also difficult if you have lost the original install discs or installers and/or license files).

We've done this with two old desktops. For one, we put in a 1TB hard drive, so it serves as our media (pictures, videos, music) server now. Very speedy because we've not installed much additional software on it, and we're careful not to do much in the browser from it. (We don't even have Flash installed.)

 

[Wishing on a star]

What processor and memory do your system have?

You could possibly be surprised to know how how far computers have come and what it takes to run at a fast speed these days. We just bought a new computer, and when we looked at our old specs, we could not believe that we were running on half the minumum processor on most of todays computer, and a fourth of the memory. No wonder it wasn't running well!!!

If your system is just not big/powerful enough to run quickly, you may need to think about a new system already. If your system specs seem okay, then a thorough tune-up and virus removal may help.

Yes, it could be virus' and it could need a good system cleanup.
Do the below in the order listed... And see if it helps.
1. Get rid of everything not frequently used,
2. uninstall your virus protection
3. get a GOOD virus protection, firewall2.
4. run defrag..


On a recent thread I recommended eSet for computers with XP, as many of the protection software offered today are not fully compatible with XP.

When we loaded eSet on our old system, it found dozens of virus infractions.

Note: many security software programs are huge system hogs... Norton is known for this... They can take over your system and really slow it up.

Do you know a trusted computer shop... How about the Geek Squad at Best Buy....

 

[raysnkaysmom]

I've defragged and my computer is still slow.....

Disboards seems to be slowest

 

[Jennasis]

I've defragged and my computer is still slow.....

Disboards seems to be slowest

Disboards has been slow for me too lately, even after the big conversion. Of course a big part of MY slowness is DH insists on downloading stuff all day while he's at work so it's there when he gets home...but I'M the one stuck with a slow computer all day!