My ACER laptop runs real slow, it never used to, what can I do?

Question

I have an ACER Travelmate 250. It's got a P4 processor, bog standard memory and bog standard everything else. When I bought it it ran ok, nothing special but it did the basics and surfed the web. Have had it for 2 years and the thing just seems to have got gradually slower and slower booting up and running programs. I had a huge problem with virus and adware that took me ages to get rid of. I have norton, but had to get rid of it cos it was just working to slowly. I think its gradually got worse over time.

The main prob is when you turn it on it takes about 5 mins too boot up everything and you just have to wait for ages (about 8 when I had to wait for Norton to boot itself up). Then other programs that used to run ok (like football manager) now run much much slower. I have done all the spybot cc cleaner on a regular basis and they show up nothing. Its almost like the memory and the harddrive work slower then they used too. Is there anything I should just buy new?

Answer 1

Follow instructions at linked site to rid viruses and/or spyware...

Norton is NOT recommended for the casual user, since it has too large a "footprint"

Best thing you can do to speed up a PC is max out the RAM! Most low-end machines come with 256Mb (or less!) and that is really insufficient (especially in shared video machines!)

Upgrade the RAM to AT LEAST 512Mb or better still 1Gb!

Answer 2

The best anti-virus software out there is AVG - it is free, effective, regularly updated and not to obtrusive. Combine this with Spyware Doctor (which you will have to pay a small subscription for - but it is the best) and you will be fully protected against spyware and viruses. In addition to this get a registry cleaner as this will route out lots of bad pathways that are confusing your pc. Try Registry Repair Pro - you can either buy the full version for £9.99 or you can use the free download and do what I do and simply keep on clicking clean and clean 3 bad paths etc... at a time... if you learn the pattern of keys to press to do the loop it's fairly quick.

This tackles those issues but as you don't think it's that anyway you need to do more. First off try defragmenting your drive... if you haven't done it before this can have a huge effect on your machines performance & can be found in Control Panel -- Performance & Maintanence. Here you can both clean up your hard disk automatically (useful if your running out of space) and also defragment (this is a lengthy process and should be left to run over night or for a few hours when you don't want your PC)

Upgrading laptops memory etc... is very tricky & expensive so I would tend to shy away from this option.... but if all else fails and your setup isn't too bad it may be worth considering... I have the feeling however you'd be better off simply buying a new one if it came to this stage.

Answer 3

I see the first 2 answers were totally useless - not surprising. You got rid of Norton, hope you replaced it with something else as you need an anti-virus program. I also hope you followed the instructions on the Norton website for removing it otherwise you have junk cluttering up your registry. Start in safe mode (f8) then run your anti-virus program and your spyware programs (yes that means more than one). I suggest using spybot, ad-awareSE (from Lavasoft) and windows Defender as a good starting point - all free. Once everything has been cleaned out you may want to consider a program like Norton utilities or SystemMechanic as you also need to clean all the junk out of your registry, fix broken shortcuts etc. Then you will see a big difference in performance. I also hope you are defragmenting on a regular basis (Norton speedisk will help, part of utilities).

Answer 4

Hi there Firstly, regarding defragmentation - this will not clear a single bit of space on your hard drive. All it does is reorganise files so that files from the same program are stored together on the hard disk, rather than being spread out. It is designed to improve your computer's efficiency. Of the programs you listed above, most, if not all, are essential to running your computer and probably wouldn't give you a noticable amount of new space if you got rid of one or two anyway. The thing is that if you start messing around by getting rid of one or more programs that were pre-installed at the time of purchase, you don't know how it will affect the computer if you remove them. I would ask how many songs/pictures you have stored. These are the prime culprits for soaking up precious space, especially music. Go through these folders and look for duplicated photos, maybe accidental copies - get rid of these. Also sift through your songs to see if there is anything you can bin. One last tip - check to see how much disk space you have allocated to your recycling bin. When I bought my laptop, the default was 10% of total disk space was reserved as the recycling bin! I changed that to 1%, effectively freeing up 3.6GB.

Answer 5

Hi

Try to find Help on MSCONFIG.

1. Click start --> run and type in msconfig. Click Startup and try to uncheck all the programs you dont need to startup automatically.

2. Run some antispyware softwares. Lavasoft Adaware is a freeware that you can use. I recommend you try smitfraudfix as well.

3. Try to remove all the un-necessary programs.

4. Try to increasing Paging memory size by going in to control panels --> system -->advanced >> performance -->advanced and click change. Make sure you dont put too less or too high paging size.

5. Also, increase RAM to atleast 512MB however I recommend 1GB.

6. If all fails, format the hard drive and install OS again.

Thanks

Answer 6

Go to Start, Run, type MSCONFIG - click OK, go to the start up tab and unclick things like qttask, - basically anything that doesn't have a path of c:\windows\system32. - be a bit careful, try doing one at a time between reboots.
Go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools and run disk defragmenter.
Tar

Answer 7

I would save all data to a memory stick or something and reload the operating system from the setup disk. I use AVG too free but quality antivirus. Definitely delete any programs you do not need from the new setup.

Answer 8

you may have to many programs running at one time on start up.
go start, run, type msconfig. startup, uncheck everything, restart computer and see if it's better, than go back and check just what you need on start up.

Answer 9

Change it for a proper laptop. Sorry for being insulting but they are such rubbish

Answer 10

find out how much ram it has the go out and buy a stick of ram with more ram