My computer has been running slow recently. A lot slower than usual, any ideas what is wrong?

Question

There are no viruses, worms, or anything like that. I have Anti-virus and have scanned.

There isn't any spyware or adware, scanned for that and took all that was on off.

It's a laptop, my battery is a bit old (just over two years) but if I plug it in, should that make a difference?

It seemed to start when I put on my next subscription of Norton Anti-Virus, but I don't see how that would be the problem. I am confused.

It seemed to get worse today when I put something else on. (I have plenty of memory on the computer, so I don't think that is it)

Oh, how old the battery is, that's when I first got the computer too.

Answer 1

you need more ram. all the stuff you have on your comp is taking up all your ram. 1 gb stick will cost you about 80 to 100 dollars

Answer 2

Two possibilities: 1) Check how much disk space you have left. If your hard drive is almost full, you could be running into problems with the swap file. One way to check it: go to Start->All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Information. Open Components and Storage and select Drives. It'll tell you how large your HDD is and how much free space you have. If it's below a gig or so, you either need a new hard drive or to delete some things.

2) When was the last time you ran Defrag? If your hard drive is very fragmented, that can result in significantly slower running. Again, go to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Defrag. Select "Analyze" and it'll tell you if you need to defrag. It might be a good idea to back up anything important before you defrag. Windows Defrag used to have a bad tendency to trash hard drives on a random basis, although I haven't heard of that happening in a while.

Answer 3

try defragmenting your hard disk - whenever I do that, it always speeds my computer up afterwards. It's usually found under Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools - you'll see defrag hard drive. It takes a little while (sometimes up to 30 minutes if you're really fragmented), but let your computer do its thing while you do something else. Also, try clearing out your cookies.

Also, are you using a DSL and HSI line or are you on dialup? Back when I had dialup, it seemed like my system got slower and slower as more and more people used that dial in number to get online. If using dialup, try swtiching to another dialup phone number in your city (be sure the number isn't in an area too far from you and costs any toll charges!)

Answer 4

Your battery, or lack of it, should not effect the speed of the laptop. The usual reason is that you have caught something, but other reasons include:

o Overheating - dust bunnies inside, defective fan?

o Running too much stuff

Download Mike Lin's StartupCPL executable. It is free, and will show you all the crud that is starting up when you boot your laptop. Most of that stuff does not have to be running all the time, just your antivirus and/or firewall.

For good measure, try ccleaner, also free, it clears out temp files, history, cookies, all sorts of rubbish. You can tune what you want it to clean up.

Answer 5

If you have Win XP, you can check the Performance Manager by clicking ctrl+alt+del. This will show you how many processes are running and the amount of RAM eaten up by each. Generally, a healthy computer should have less than 35 processes running.

Also, you can control which programs run at startup. Click Start=>run and enter msconfig to do this.

Answer 6

It sounds like the computer is running too much software in the background. Run 'msconfig' from the Start Menu and uncheck the programs you don't want running at startup. You can also run Norton Diagnostics to check for any other issues.

Answer 7

My computer started running very slow and I found out there was a program running in the background that was using most of the memory. I found it and deleted it by pressing control, alt, delete and stopping each program one at a time till I found out which one was using the memory.

Answer 8

have you ever scanned for spyware? If not acquire, replace and test with Spybot and Adaware. How long considering the fact which you ran a diskcleanup? Is your tension loose from fragmentation? This ailment can sluggish issues down. shop a examine on frag stages and additionally on the loose area.

Answer 9

Go to Internet options and delete the temporary files. Then run AVG, Spy-bot, and Ad-Aware. Then do a "Defrag". It should speed up a bit then.

Answer 10

norton has had problems like that i had one it was a desktop and it did the same thing uninstalled it did a clean up disk and it worked fine. what kind of laptop?? how much memory????