Why is my year old pc so slow -?

Question

It takes ages to boot up and is really slow between web pages. I have removed old unused programs (but cannot remove the skype pop up when i boot up!) How can i speed it up?

Answer 1

Reformat your hard drive and reinstall everything from scratch. Your computer is probaby infested with spyware and adware.

Answer 2

Heh, just answered a similar question, but I'll run through it again.

1. Delete unwanted programs using the uninstaller or Windows (I assume you're running windows if you're asking this question) Add / Remove program in control panel.

2. Download the latest definitions for your anti-virus software, if you don't have anti-virus software (or even if you do, for that matter) I highly recommend the free software called Avast! Anti-virus (www.avast.com/). This software is the mutts nutts, especially as it's completely buck shee.

3. Once you've got your latest definitions, run a full pre-boot scan of your entire hard drive(s). If it comes back clean, that's cool. If not, either remove all the offending buggers, or, and preferably if it's full of virii, back-up all your important stuff (documents, uni work, mp3's, porn etc), format your hard drive and re-install your operating system.

4. Next, download a decent firewall, I recommend ZoneAlarm, the totally free and brilliant firewall which will keep hackers at bay! (www.zonelabs.com/), keep this on and you'll be safe from anyone making connections to your computer and slowing it down.

5. Get some decent registry maintenance software, Registry Mechanic is very good for this (although it's not free), but run it at least once a month to make sure your registry is clean of clutter and firing on all cylinders.

6. Other than that, there's always the option of upgrading. A year old PC, is an old PC with the rate of how quick technology advances. Some more RAM will greatly improve peformance, and you can pick up decent size modules from high street stores (PC World etc) for a relativly low price these days.

Hope that helps.

Answer 3

I cant believe some of you. One liner answers that are so not needed.

Considering you are running a Microsoft OS:

IMHO, Spyware Doctor, Adaware, etc should be used, tho in SAFE MODE. This way all unecessary programs wont be loaded. 95% of the time, this method is Secure.

Secondly, open internet explorer, goto Tools, Internet Options, and clear anything that would be storing files. There you can also select how much space is used for Temporary Files. By default, i think its 50MB, which in cookies, thats ALOT!! You should change that to like 5 or even 0 for maximum effiecency.

Third, once you have done that, close IE or whatever browser you are using. Go to Start, Settings, Control Panel, Defragment. Here, you can deframent your hard drive. This will speed up your computer too.

Answer 4

Most of what I've read in these responses so far is either bogus, incomplete, or pretty much unintelligible in general.

1. Go to http://www.download.com and search for these programs, download, install. and run them. AdAware Pro Se; Spybot Search & Destroy; and if you don't have an antivirus program on your PC get AVG Antivirus (free edition) also.

2. Regarding the slowness of your PC. There can be lots of factors causing it but reformatting isn't the best option always. Your PC is only a year old. Most likely you have a fragmented hard drive and/or you are running all kinds of things in the background that are eating up your system resources. Try the following things.

A major cause of slow PC's is fragmentation of the hard drive.
You need to defragment the HD at least once a week if not more depending on how much you use your computer, and what you do with it. To use the Microsoft defrag utility: click on Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Defrag
This may take several hours so do it when you don't need to use your PC.

A great program for defragging automatically is Diskeeper 10. It costs $30 but is well worth it. Go to www.download.com and search for Diskeeper. Read the Publishers Description and the tech and user reviews. It can be scheduled to run automatically as the program deems necessary, and if you are using your PC and the program launches itself, it will take a backseat to whatever you are doing and give you the priority for CPU usage. I think you'll agree it's a good program to have. It precludes your needing to remember to defrag at regular intervals.

Also, another major cause of a slow PC is programs that are running in the background. Here's another great program, and it's free. Go to http://www.sysinternals.com and download the program named "autoruns". This utility will tell you exactly what is running on your PC and provides a nice and easy way to shut down the ones you don't want to boot at start up. Once you have it installed, launch it and use the tabs at the top of the window to access the various categories. Use the Logon tab. If you use the "everything" tab it will overwhelm you because the list is massive. All you have to do is uncheck the box next to the program name and the program will not start at your next boot up. Hurry as this site has been bought up by Microsoft and these free programs may not be around much longer.

Another good thing to have is a little program called FreeRAM Pro. It is free and is available from www.download.com This program puts a little RAM meter on the System Tray and shows how much RAM you have remaining that you are not using at any given time. With only 256M of RAM I think you are going to be surprised at how little RAM you have to run other programs. Also, once it is installed you can right click on the little meter, then click on RESTORE and it will open the RAM display window. You can tweak the settings so it will display your CPU usage also.



Hope this helps

Answer 5

Try the windows update page, make sure you have the newest security updates, try the free trial all in one security program and it should be able to clean up all the crap that might be slowing you down, get rid of any old programs you dont use or need, defrag your hard drive, and look at your ram. If its a year old you should be able to handle a gig of ram, check your system info and see how much you have, if you are running on less, i would recomend upgrading to a gig, its only about 80 bucks. That should show you some improvment. Its hard to say without knowing what kind of system you have but those are the basic steps.

Answer 6

You are probably loading up a lot of programs when you start the computer, one thing you can do is go to Start > Run> type in msconfig
Go to the Startup tab on the far right. If there are a lot of programs here, you may want to uncheck a few such as Instant Messenger programs.
Something else you can do is right click on My Computer and click Properties. Click the Advanced tab, then click on the settings button for Performance. I usually uncheck all but the last two.
You will also want to run anti-spyware and anti-virus programs. Make sure that they are up to date.
Defrag your hard drive.
To speed up internet explorer, go to Tools > Internet Options in internet explorer. Click delete cookies and delete files.
Also, delete the temporary files.
One last thing you can do is ctrl + alt + del and click processes. Be careful in here, you end the wrong process and you will restart your computer. Click the User Name tab up top to sort by user name. Look for your user name. You can end every process in here EXCEPT explorer.exe and taskmgr.exe. I also reccomend leaving your virus protection software running. Do not end any other processes.
This should speed your computer up.

Answer 7

Sounds like to me your computer is full of spyware, here is some links for some freeware that will help you get some of it off.
www.safernetworking.org - Spybot search and destroy 1.4
www.lavasoft.com - Ad-aware S.E
www.free.grisoft.com - AVG
this are a few that will help, but watch out for ones that keeps coming back after they are removed, if you come across any of these they will have to be manually removed, if this is the case take it to a local shop that you can trust and have them do a full clean up. due to the fact manually removing them means you have to hack the registry and unless you know what your doing in there DO NOT ATTEMPT IT!! this should only be done by a technician.

Answer 8

Upgrading should happen as a last resort - ie. by upgrading the motherboard etc.. Sounds to me that you may either have thousands of virus or spyware running through the system. Download spybot for free at this address: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html and please rember that a donation is welcome but not nessacary. I suggest you also defrag you pc more often. This is accessable from:

­· Start menu
· All programmes
· Accessories
· System tools
· Disk defragment

Let it run over night is my best advise - it will free up space and help your harddrive more accesable. If these fail, then upgraded ram may be the best way forward.

Answer 9

Do the following and see if that makes any difference.

Click on TOOLS

INTERNET OPTIONS

DELETE COOKIES, DELETE FILES AND CLEAR HISTORY.

Then once you have done that, do the following

Click on START

ALL PROGRAMS

ACCESSORIES

SYSTEMS TOOLS

DISK CLEAN UP

check through what the disk clean up suggests, and uncheck anything you want to keep, and check anything you don't want to keep, but be careful not to delete any setup files or anything like that.

Once you have done that, do the following

As above, but click on DISK DEFRAGMENTER, only do a system scan though first, it will tell you whether you need to defrag or not, if it says you do, be warned it can take anything between minutes to a couple of hours.

Hope this is helpful.

All the best.

Answer 10

could be a multitude of things. Go to pcpitstop.com and run the short test for your computer. It will take anywhere from 1-5 minutes to run, and will give you an explanation of everything going on in your pc. Click on the colored flags and read what is going on and how to solve the problems. My guess is you have spy ware, and a lot of unnecessary things starting at boot up. Good luck.

Answer 11

Either buy a new computer or do the following:

upgrade the RAM to at least 256MB 512 if you can. I bought some used ram off Ebay for 12 bucks and that included shipping.

that is the single most effective thing for speeding up your computer.

spending much more money replacing other things isnt justified as new ones dont cost all that much for what you are needing.