Computer help needed

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Monty

Monty

Group Buy Coordinator
Joined
Mar 4, 2005
Messages
8,462
Location
Pearland, Texas, USA.
Both my lap top and my desk top have started to run slow. When they first power on, it takes forever to finish loading and the indicator for the hard drives stays on the entire time. After about 5 minutes the indicator goes off, and any programs I want to run load slow, but once the load, they seem to rum OK. The Lap Top is a lot slower in loading than the Desk Top. I have Trend Micro VP and updated and ran the scan, turned up nothing. I running 95 on the Lap Top and Vista on the Desk Top.
Any help in correcting this would be greatly appreciated.
 
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Just a couple of thoughts.... Do you have plenty of free space on your hard drive?
Do you defrag the drives regularly?
 
Also, a big problem with older laptops like that is that you keep adding to the list of programs that start up when you turn the computer on and even if you don't use them, they still launch and use up your computers ram... I can't remember off hand how to change this but it is covered in those links above...
 
Both my lap top and my desk top have started to run slow. When they first power on, it takes forever to finish loading and the indicator for the hard drives stays on the entire time. After about 5 minutes the indicator goes off, and any programs I want to run load slow, but once the load, they seem to rum OK. The Lap Top is a lot slower in loading than the Desk Top. I have Trend Micro VP and updated and ran the scan, turned up nothing. I running 95 on the Lap Top and Vista on the Desk Top.
Any help in correcting this would be greatly appreciated.
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Mannie - Pearland, TX
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God is great, beer is good.................................and people are crazy
Click to expand...

There's the problem....they're drunk!! :wink: Seriously in addition to virus's, fragmented files, to much crap loading you will get tons of clutter from the internet and other programs creating temp files. Try this shareware: http://www.ccleaner.com/ I've used it for years and our IT use it at work....
 
Also, you might consider that as MS updates your OS they are worrying less about system resources. And with each patch, they may require more resources. IE 8 was one of them. Adding more ram will fix this.
 
Monty.... Seriously....if you are using a computer that still runs Win95, I would suggest that you need a newer computer. And if possible, I would up-grade your OS from Vista to Win7, I think you would find it much better to work with.
There are several things you can do to clean up your computer for free. 1) Do a Disc Clean-up 2) Defrag 3) Go to: www.malwarebytes.org and download the free version 4) Remove all anti-virus programs on your computer 5) Go to: www.avast.com and download the free version of this Anti-Virus 6) Go to: www.mozilla.com and use Firefox as a browser at all times. 7) Go to: www.ccleaner.com download this program and run both, the cleaner and the registry cleaner. Then run the Malwarebytes program, then scan the computer with the Avast program, and then run the CCleaner again. If you want the computer to run at it's fastest, then make sure it has the maximum amount of RAM installed, make sure that if you use multiple sticks of RAM that they are the same size and speed.
Also make sure you keep up on all the MS updates too.
This sounds like a lot of stuff, but I know that it will work to make your computer run faster and help to keep your computer clean, so that it don't get filled up with a bunch of junk.
PS.... If anyone is interested I repair and sell used laptops for the University I work for, we have a very nice one right now for $275. PM me if you are interested and I will send you the specs and a picture.
 
Jonathan is on track...You need to make programs that are not needed dormant until needed. Your computer uses power and ram to open those babies up...Once you get the all of them open, you can remove the demand by shutting them down in your control bar. Pain the butt to do it every time. This is one of the many reasons that I have stopped using Windows for. I have an iBook from 2004 and it starts up to full capacity in less than a minute...HD 40% full...There is not a Windows computer out there that can top this for the reasons previously mentioned. You only want necessary programs to function at startup...Maybe only your spyware/antivirus. Thats it really.

I am sure the links above can take care of that for you. Defrag and clearing your temp files and cache can only do some much. The more crap you have on your HD the more time it takes for your system to search through it. Keep HD available space high and it will run faster.

Hope that may help a bit,

Grub
 
johnkofi said:
Monty.... Seriously....if you are using a computer that still runs Win95, I would suggest that you need a newer computer. And if possible, I would up-grade your OS from Vista to Win7, I think you would find it much better to work with.
There are several things you can do to clean up your computer for free. 1) Do a Disc Clean-up 2) Defrag 3) Go to: www.malwarebytes.org and download the free version 4) Remove all anti-virus programs on your computer 5) Go to: www.avast.com and download the free version of this Anti-Virus 6) Go to: www.mozilla.com and use Firefox as a browser at all times. 7) Go to: www.ccleaner.com download this program and run both, the cleaner and the registry cleaner. Then run the Malwarebytes program, then scan the computer with the Avast program, and then run the CCleaner again. If you want the computer to run at it's fastest, then make sure it has the maximum amount of RAM installed, make sure that if you use multiple sticks of RAM that they are the same size and speed.
Also make sure you keep up on all the MS updates too.
This sounds like a lot of stuff, but I know that it will work to make your computer run faster and help to keep your computer clean, so that it don't get filled up with a bunch of junk.
PS.... If anyone is interested I repair and sell used laptops for the University I work for, we have a very nice one right now for $275. PM me if you are interested and I will send you the specs and a picture.
Click to expand...
Error on my part. It's XP not 95 on my Lap Top. I was tired when I typed that.
On my Desk Top, running Vista, I did 1 and 2, Trend Micro show no viruses or anything, and I only run Fire Fox, and did a registry clean up with Advanced Registry Optimizer 2010. Runs a little better, but not like it did when I first got the Desk Top, a Dell Inspiron 530, about 18 months ago.
 
Even if it tells you you don't need to defrag, you need to defrag. At least once a week. Also run a spyware cleaner, disk cleanup, and antivirus. Each week. Turn off everything you can on start up, including spyware. There's no need to have your virus or spyware check every picture and file everytime you start up. It was already checked before you shut down. Put files and even programs you don't use very often on disks and delete to increase space. Spend 30 minutes once a week cleaning and it will increase your speed.
 
Update

My desk top seems to be back to working OK, just very slow upon start up. George suggested, and I had already done this, pulling up the Task Manager and seeing what Processes are being loaded and deleting what is not needed. This sounds fine, but how do I go about this without looking up what each one does?

As for my Lap Top, I'm about ready to wipe everything and reinstall everything. Veeeeeerrrrrrryyyyyyyy slooooooooooowwwwww loading from start up and I keep getting an error message that says -
"Generic Host Process for Win 32 Sercices has encountered a problem and needs to close."

and it will not recognize any of the USB ports and they do not show up when I query "My Computer".
Just a thought, since I'm running XP on the Lap Top, would upgrading to Vista be the best fix instead of reformatting and reloading XP and everything else? Or should I skip Vista and go to Windows 7 (7 is the new one, isn't it?). But then I'd havta go buy the upgrade and that would mean less money for pen stuff.
 
Hey Monty....One question...how new is your virus software?? There was a virus going around a while ago that was affecting USB's. Is that a possibility?

Just wondering

Grub
 
I'd stay with XP on the laptop if I were you! Consider Win7 maybe later after it's been out for awhile. Don't even bother with Vista.
 
Run as fast as you can in the other direction from Vista it is bad news. I just got a new Dell computer and they put XP pro on it the wife made me get her a new computer so she could get rid of Vista. Went with Windows 7 and she loves it.
 
grub32 said:
Hey Monty....One question...how new is your virus software?? There was a virus going around a while ago that was affecting USB's. Is that a possibility?

Just wondering

Grub
Click to expand...

My virus software is Trend Micro. It was updated a week or so ago, but can't now since I can't access the web on the Lap Top now.
 
and it will not recognize any of the USB ports and they do not show up when I query "My Computer".
Click to expand...

That's not a virus issue. I would try a system recovery on start up. Go into safe mode and follow the promts
 
Monty said:
Already tried that.....didn't work.
Click to expand...

If it's not reconizing your ports, you've got a hardware issue. If rebooting in safe mode didn't work, you may have to do a complete out of the box reboot. I'm not an expert, but I've had to do it before. This will cause you to lose all files and programs that didn't come with your computer. Save everything on disk, but really, the costs of new computers with mega software makes buying fresh a good idea.
 
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