Why is my laptop slow?

Question

The other day my Acer laptop of 1.5 years took very long to load up (the windows XP blue line load thing). Then there was a black screen for a long time, then the laptop itself performed a scan on the C: drive, and then when this was done, it said that it 'recovered' some files. Ever since then, my laptop has been running very slow: long time to open programmes etc. But it is slightly faster after one hour or so. Now whenever I turn it on, it takes like 15-20 min to properly load, and also the programmes and all are very slow. What's wrong? Is it the hard-drive?

Answer 1

your pc will build up temp files and tempInt files over time and slow you down more and more. Clean out your temp folders. Remove any unneeded programs. Defrag. Consider adding ram. Clean up your four startup areas, removing unneeded TSRs.

Answer 2

Hi. Answer one is right. After loading Windows, open the task manager and see what is chewing up your CPU time. You can try stopping the ones you think are not supposed to be there and see if things speed up.

Answer 3

Sounds like you might be infected with a virus. Whatever you do, do not do a system restore, that wont take care of the virus. I would suggest going to this tech site for help, it's free.
http://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/

Answer 4

hard drive could be going bad... if you've recently installed any new programs (especially something like limewire) you should check for spyware and/or viruses

Answer 5

Download this wonderful little free cleaner it will clear out all of your caches.
http://www.filehippo.com/download/9838386a743262a2d7aaedfb3b432ae2/download/

If you have anti spyware - adware run them - it will probably free up your PC no end.

Good luck
Gray