God awful slow computer

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Haynie

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May 20, 2011
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I realize this is not the forum to be posing this question but in the past folks have gotten some good straight forward answers to computer questions. I have looked on the net and at computer forums and all it did was get me confused.

My computer takes FOREVER to start up. It was not always like this. It is an HP Pavilian running Vista. Surprisingly Vista has been fine for me.

I have defragged the hard drive and ran AVG twice. No help. Does anyone know if those sites that advertise boosting computer speed work, or are they just a scam? I am patient but this is ridiculous.

By the way, I am not computer literate.
 
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Most of the third-party, pop-up ad, magazine ad, TV ad software sold to 'help' improve the speed of your PC is unnecessary and some of it is downright evil -- buggy, full of malware, etc. I would trust -- but be very careful -- with Symantec, McAfee, Trend, Kaspersky, etc software. Always back up your computer first.

I recommend you take your PC to a professional (try Best Buy's in-store Geek Squad) and have them look it over. In all likelihood, what you have is a registry full of entries for software you may have tried and not liked which was improperly uninstalled. You may also have way too many applications trying to start when you boot your PC (many apps think they need to be started every time you turn the 'on/off' switch to the 'on' position and they will stay in your Start Up folder until removed). If you do this, make sure they are using quality software (see trusted list above).


If you really like taking chances, use some of the advertised software. If you really like your PC, let a professional clean it up for you.


If your PC is capable, I also recommend upgrading it to Windows 7 (I would recommend an 'upgrade' to Win XP but I don't think MS allows anyone to install it anymore.)


One thing you definitely need to do whether you upgrade or not is to install ALL the MS upgrades and patches available for your operating system (Vista/Win XP or Win7). Many of these resolve issues users have with slowness and other problems. And don't forget the patches for other software (browsers, word processing, etc.) as well.
 
go to

Piriform - Download CCleaner, Defraggler, Recuva, Speccy - Millions of users worldwide!

and download ccleaner. It is free. Run the cleaner, then run the registery cleaner. Say yes when it asks if you want to back up the registry.

Their defragger is also much better than the one from microsoft. It is also free.

This is the ONLY software for speeding up your computer that I can recommend, and I've had my own computer consulting business for over 30 years,

Then go to MALWAREBYTES.ORG and download malwarebytes. (It says it is a trial version of Pro, but at the end of the trial period it will revert to the free version if you don't want to pay for it. It is $25 for the pro version...one time fee, not per year. I recommend the pro version if you have kids on the computer. It won't let them into sites known to have malware.



Sharon
 
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If you are running Windows you can get Microsoft Security Essentials FREE. After you download it, run a scan to clean up viruses then let it run in the background all the time. It has done well by me for the several years and it uses the least amount of resources of any of the security packages.
 
Sawdust46 said:
If you are running Windows you can get Microsoft Security Essentials FREE. After you download it, run a scan to clean up viruses then let it run in the background all the time. It has done well by me for the several years and it uses the least amount of resources of any of the security packages.
Click to expand...

Security Essentials didn't fare very well in a recent comparison of free software. I use AVGFree or AVAST. Both are free.
 
How is your drive space?

Windows uses a disk cache to run programs in virtual memory. When your hard drive is close to full things tend to run much slower. If you have less than 1GB of hard disk space then I would be concerned.

I fixed my wife's slow computer recently this way. I found she is using Windows Essentials Photo Gallery to edit all of her photos. This program saves the original in a backup folder for every photo you edit. If you use it for a long time it can eventually fill your drive. Thanks Microsoft. :)
 
What operating system are you running and how much memory do you have. XP will run fine in 2 gb of memory. Win7 really needs at least 4. If you have windows 8, I'm so sorry.

Increasing your memory if you have less that what I mentioned, will give you a big boost in speed.
 
+1 on CCleaner. When I used Windows, it was almost the only program I used to clean up the junk on my computer. Also, +1 on the disk space advice. Running low on disk space causes many problems.
 
This is usually a result of adware, malware, and viruses. You should always have a reputable anti-virus program and keep it up-to-date. LavaSoft has a free anti-adware/malware program that works quite well named AdAware SE. It is available from www.Downloads.com.

Tomas
 
Ran ccleaner and Defraggler. They cleaned a lot up. In fact I have had my computer set to defrag every Wednesday night and according to Defraggler it was way fragmented. We will see how things go. While it was defragging I worked on something in the shop. We will see how it goes.

I have Vista, 3gigs of memory, and my HD is only a quarter full.
 
Just ran a restart. Things worked faster than this morning. I may run everything again tomorrow for poops and giggles.
 
One product that I use to track down what software needs to be updated is Secunia PSI. The PSI stands for Personal Software Inspector. It's free and can be found at secunia.com. Just wanted to add that to the mix.

Bob
 
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