Computer running slow and heating up quickly Dell inspiron 1420?

Question

I have a brand new Dell Inspiron 1420 that I got this summer before I came to college. Being stupid I tried downloading a program to watch TV shows online, and ever since then my laptop hasn't been the same. First I couldn't even open up the regular menu - the screen was blank but I could see the cursor. I was able to open it in start mode and ran a virus scan or two and was able to start it up normally.
Now it takes me forever to open up a program - anything from internet explorer to itunes. Once I get the internet and such going it works fine, but just so slow.
Along with that, I can kind of feel my laptop heating up really quickly and staying that way if I'm online a lot.
There is a place at my college I can take my laptop to have it fixed, but I'm trying to take care of it from my dorm so I don't hvae to do without it for awhile.
Any kind of help as far as defragmenting my computer or whatnot would be much appreciated.
P.S. If you couldn't tell by now I'm not that tech savvy

Answer 1

ok first make sure there's no dust or paper covering the heat vents on the back/sides. Next download something like ccleaner or autoruns (or click no run and type in msconfig). This will show you all the programs running in the background at that moment. If its not something that needs to start at start up or needs to be running then turn it off (don't mess with anything Microsoft or you could really mess something up). I would leave anti virus and firewalls on but stop stuff like updaters and yahoo and itunes and junk like that. then restart. now just to make sure that none of this is caused by viruses or adware or whatnot, download spybot search and destroy or adaware and run a scan on your computer. They should find anything like that. If your running vista email me sometime and I can show you places that tell you how to trim down the OS.

Answer 2

Sounds like you have a lot of spyware/adware that is causing your CPU to work overtime - thus the heat. Download the following (free) - spybot S&D (get the name exact, do not download anything"close"), adawareSe from lavasoft (not Vista compatible however) and Boclean from comodo.com. Reboot your system into safe mode (F8 key at startup) - it WILL run slower. Run Spybot and Adaware - you'll be shocked by how much junk they find. Boclean runs all the time and will stop a lot of stuff before it runs.

Answer 3

Alright the first thing to get your computer back to normal what I would de is 1)Reinstall your operating system
2)Do a system restore to the earlyest point
3) their is a fan you can buy for your laptop that cools it down
If you need any help or step by step intrustion email and ill help.
[e-mail]
Signed
Dylan Carter