I just bought a computer two weeks ago...now it takes EONS to start up and shut down. What happened ??

Question

I have 1GB of memory and 160GB hd. Anybody know what's wrong? It's even slow typing this message...

Answer 1

You probably have spyware. Try These.

Topics covered are: Anti virus, Anti spy ware, Browsers, e-mail, Word processors, Database, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Drawings and Photo manipulations. All programmes described are free to use, some even for commercial use.

Antiviral.

AVG free. Excellent protection available from: http://www.Grisoft.com

Don't use two antiviral products together as they may be incompatible. If your Antiviral trial has run out, then remove product from your computer and get the AVG installed.

Anti-spyware

Essential products are: Adaware SE from: http://www.lavasoft.com

Spybot SD http://www.safer-networking.org/en/spybotsd/index.html

Spywareblaster http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

Windows Defender - from Microsoft downloads.

Office Applications

Open Office has an extremely good free to use and distribute product at http://www.openoffice.org

It contains programmes fully functional in Word-processing, Database, Spreadsheets, Drawing and Presentation. It looks and feels like Microsoft Office and can even make PDF's

Photo-manipulations

For ease of use and management of your photo files try Kodak easyshare software http://www.kodak.com

or Picasso. http://.picasa.google.com/

For advanced and fully functional photographic manipulation gimp2 is very similar to Photoshop and is available from http://gimp.org

Browsers and E-mail programmes.

Can recommend Firefox for browsing and has many safety features installed and is self updating and for a general e-mail programme, Thunderbird is very good. Go to:

http://www.mozilla.com/products/

Fun and helpful programmes

Have a look at Calendar Magic, http://www.stokepoges.plus.com/calendar.htm


it has lots of Scientific, Geometry, Factor and Expression calculators as well as Global distances, Sun and Moon Data, a Pregnancy Calculator, Time Data and Alarm clocks as well as an extremely comprehensive range of Calendars in about 27 different formats from Afghanistan to Vietnamese, including Chinese and Hindu.

C Cleaner.http://www.ccleaner.com/

This will tell you a lot about what is on your computer, such as running programmes,cookies, History, settings etc. and will help you clean up and remove unwanted items. Be careful how you use it as it is a very powerful programme and you should read the help index before you do anything with it.

Hope this information is of help to you and others.

Answer 2

Go to Start Menu, click RUN.
Type msconfig and hit enter.
You should see a pop up box.
Go to Startup tab and uncheck all the programs that you do not want on your start up.
This will prevent those programs from starting up when you restart windows.
This will usually make your computer go a little faster if you have do not have much memory on your computer.
You do not want a bunch of things running in your background during startup if it is not necessary.

Also go to MY COMPUTER and "right click" on your C drive and choose Properties. Do a disk cleanup, then do a disk compression, and then do a disk defrag.

You might want to install a spyware and an anti-virus on your computer so that you can check for things that might be running in your background that you did not put there.

Answer 3

If it was working fine before, I think either it could be due to some virus or some spyware or may be some hardware.

For removing Virus: Update your antivirus program and run a full system scan for viruses.

For Spyware: Go to download.com or google.com and search for and download and install (1) Adaware as well as (2) Spybot Search and Destroy and scan your computer for spywares.
Caution: Please use these software at your own risk. They worked for me but may or may not work for you. So, please use at your own risk. They are third party softwares so u really cant guarantee. However I have been using since more than 2 years now and have found them to be of quite a good help.

(3) If steps 1 and 2 do not solve your problem, then get your system checked physically by your vendor.


Cheers,
Manish

Answer 4

Squints,

Hope you don't have a virus already ! Loose ram chip ? To help starting, go to start, run, then on the command line (type)
msconfig, hit enter, go to last tab on right, startup, and uncheck everything but your antivirus and sys tray. Restart the computer, then check "do not show this message again." Do this as a part of your cleanup once a week or so, and run defrag, that might help one running slow as well.

doctorjlong

Answer 5

you should install 4 things to your new computer before using the internet, all the windows updates, a firewall, an antivirus and antispyware software.

if you had done this, AND it was still running slow I would say it was hardware failure, maybe a bad HD or ram. I assume you didn't, so you probably are spyware and virus infested up the yin yang. to completly fix it, do those things above after reinstalling your operatng system.

Answer 6

You have a lot of programs that you've added on since you got it most likely. Those programs need to start and stop, and that happens when you boot-up and shut-down.

Take a look near the Clock Icon....there's probably a ton of programs runnning that you don't need. AOL is a RAM killer. Norton and MacAfee are RAM vultures. (try AVG free version for your antivirus needs)

Answer 7

You may have a software conflict. Go to the start menu and go to RUN. Type SFC to check your computer. If this shows that there are no problems this may mean that there is a software conflict with your operating system.

Answer 8

Spyware

Answer 9

Can you say "spyware?"

Download both Ad-ware and Spybot Seek & Detroy and run them both. Both as free. As they use different list for what they consider to be spyware, one may get something the other misses.

Answer 10

okay. here's what i do when my computer is slow:

1. give it a pep talk
ex.- "it's okay. take your time. just get me there. you can do it. yes you can. i know you can."

2. if that doesn't work, give it a hug. computers deserve a hug every now and then