I have a hp pavilion 500 computer and its so slow I thought it was the internet b/c i have high speed but its?

Question

called at&t I have DSL Its suposta be high speed (more like a turtle) but the computer itself is slow on everything and it will frezze up! Its not a internet problem they told me we were on theh phone for hours and figured out it was the computer itself. I got it from a friend of my moms for a good price, b ut it wasn't like tjat when I first hooked it up all ive done is down load like 3 games it shouldnt do that i wouldn't think. could someone please help me out on how to speed it up I dont know how to defragment my computer I dont know what to do!! Please help Im fixing to start college online and dont need all these problems!!! it wasn't that slow when i first hooked it up I need help in texas!!!! I also dont know how to burn cd or dvd it says cd writer/dvd. but i mainly want to know how to speed the computer up thanks for ANY help you can give me!! I have a 2 month old little boy & a 2 yr old i have my hands full alreday it would help to have one less problem!!

Answer 1

HI, I work in the Computer field for about 10 years now. You have a common problem that is sometimes hard to get rid of. You have spy-ware running on your machine.

It is advertising software that gets installed in the background when you are not watching and you can get it from many sites with out ever knowing you got something.

It is kinda like a virus, but your virus program wont catch it. The first thing i suggest is to download the following application ( http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Personal-Edition/3000-8022_4-10399602.html?tag=lst-0-8 ). Install the program and follow the instructions to get it scanning your PC. I am willing to bet that it will find quite a few things. Once it shows you that it is finished, you can "quarantine" what it finds and delete them. this will NOT harm your system at all. I guaranty that it will make it a lot faster.

Now even though you got this from the Internet, it can affect the way your machine performs. If i can be anymore help, please let me know.

Answer 2

Hp Pavilion 500 Series

Answer 3

Hp Pavilion 500 Pc Series

Answer 4

You need to run a virus program and a spyware program on your PC to remove any potential threats from it. DSL internet makes it even easier to catch these things since the computer is always logged onto it, even before virus programs have time to boot up. Other problems may have to do with the size of your memory. Even three games can slow it down if you do not have enough memory for it. Depending on which Windows version you have, defragmenting is easy. If you have the most common XP, you can go to "Start", "Control Panel", "Performance and Maintanance", "Rearrance items on your hard disk to make programs run faster". Also if you delete your cookies and internet history, this may help. This tends to take up a lot of disk space. Go to "Start", "Control Panel", "Network and Internet Connections", and "Internet Options", this will open a menu and click the buttons that say: "Delete Cookies", "Delete Files", and "Clear History." This will delete all unwanted cookies and files that internet sites save to your computer when you go to them. Of course, don't panic when you go back to the internet and your dropdown bar no longer holds your internet addresses. Clearing your history does this. CD/DVD writing is a little more complicated, and while I could explain this too you, I don't have the time at the moment. Save that for a different question maybe. I just hope my answer has helped. Try these things. It might not speed it up completely since if it's an older PC, older PCs tend to just slow down over time. But it will help a lot. Good luck.

Answer 5

It could be spyware, but I will say we also own one and I just completely wiped it and reinstalled the factory install, and it is still extremely slow. I've been in the computer field for 25 years, and this machine is just pure junk.

It can't even get the full speed of my internet with a Ethernet cable plugged in. It gets 40meg down where I get 200meg on the other PC.

Answer 6

Do you have some sort of Virus protection? If not get it and run it.
My 2nd guess is spy ware cookies. You can down load like spybot to eat these cookies. Also I don't know the memory stats on this computer. you might simply be running out of Ram memory. After all the above get help running defrag

Answer 7

First download Spybot to get rid of all of the adware that it sounds like you have on your pc, http://spywarebot.com/?hop=advanced99&p=3&gid=1072645447&oid=&aid=

Then go to Start, programs, accessories, system tools and there you can defrag your hard drive.

Answer 8

I run a computer company and this is a common spyware/virus problem.

I'm not sure what anti-virus program you are using but i have been using avast home anti-virus for 3 years (this is a free program) because it has a boot time scanner that runs after you reboot and before windows starts up, make sure you uninstall your current anti-virus scanner before installing avast, it will ask to run a boot time scan when you install it.
http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

Next you need to install,update, and run Ad-Aware, make sure to do a full scan not a quick scan.
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

Next you need to install,update, and run spybot search and destroy.
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html

Next you need to install and run X-cleaner, just check "Quickly scan for malware programs" then click start cleaning.
http://www.xblock.com/download/xcleaner_setup.exe

Finally install and run Microsoft defender.
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

After all thats done install diskeeper lite to do a defrag.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=1207

Answer 9

Interesting question!