Ds's laptop - he's driving me crazy because it's too slow

[admylin]

We bought 14 year old ds a Think Pad laptop a year and a half ago. It's so slow now even though it has plenty of storage space left but the Task Manager shows 91 processes running. Is that alot? He has done the usual clean ups (defrag etc) but nothing helps.

His WiFi keeps getting switched off too when he's in the middle of some team game that he plays with his friends then he goes crazy because the game will be lost if he drops out. The internet connection on our PC is fine, the WiFi light is still on. Is it worth taking to a professional or is this the normal thing for laptops?

What you need to do for me to help me work out the computer's specification is click on the start menu and right-click on 'computer' and then, from the menu which appears, click 'properties'.

This should take you to a menu which has, on the right hand side, the specification of the computer, including processor and RAM. If you can post that information I can get some idea of what sort of machine it is.

Does the wifi only drop out in the game and never at any other time? There are several things that could be causing this and you'll need a geek to fix it.

flatpack some of it's in German unfortunately but here is what I found:
He has Windows 7 Home Premium
3,4 Windows Leistungsindex ( is that performance index maybe)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T6670 @ 2.20GHz
RAM 2,00 BG (1,87 free)

Yes it mostly goes off in the middle of a game, he plays it with some server called Hamachi. If a geek can fix it I don't mind taking it to one but if it's a rubbish laptop (as ds says 100 times in the middle of his rants when it goes offline) is it worth it!?

I would check that the internal wireless card isn't loose. It might be dislodging and throwing him off. Without looking at what processes are running it is hard to say what ones aren't necessary. If you open the task manager, and order by size though you should be able to see where the ram is going.

Which browser is he using? FF is notorious for memory leaks, Chrome is abotu the fastest.

German's no problem. Yes, that's the performance index.

I wouldn't have said that the laptop's a bad choice. That processor isn't the fastest but for day-to-day use - web browsing, writing documents and the like - it's fine. I imagine that there's several programs on there slowing it down. Which antivirus are you using, for example? If you're using AVG or Norton they both have a serious impact on performance. 2GB RAM is a bit sparse but that can be upgraded cheaply. The slowness for gaming is probably because most laptops in that price point have a standard Intel graphics card. You have to spend around £600 to get a machine with a gaming graphics card.

If he's losing the wireless connectivity to the router, that's a problem with the wireless card in the machine. Might just need some update software. If he keeps wireless connectivity to the router but loses connection to the game, the router's configuration (ports, perhaps) is likely to be the problem. You'll need a geek for that one.

If your 14-year old son wants a faster laptop I advise you to send him out to earn the money to pay for it. :D

Thanks for the info - I might sound as if I know what I'm talking about when I take it to the laptop doctor! He uses Chrome Chops
He has 86 running atthe moment and the biggest are Netzmanager from T-onlne and explorer.exe

flatpack Ds has over a thousand ? saved so he can afford to get a new one but he's wanting a PC with cable to the router but that means it has to go under 2 doors, down the hall to his room. I'll tell him about the RAM upgrading (is that easy? Could he manage it himself?)and graphics card - where do I find which one he has on his laptop? He might be able to upgrade cheaper than buying a new PC and messing the place up with great long cables!

Just noticed - we have Norton, paid for 1 year protection. What's better for him?

It doesn't slow my PC down though. Although I only use it for MN, FB and then work with pdf and word.

If you just need to solve the wireless problem and the laptop wireless is unreliable, there are alternatives to putting in a very long network cable:

(1) Get a couple of powerline adapters like these which plug into mains sockets - one near the router and one near the laptop. This avoids using wireless altogether (probably your best option).

(2) Get a wireless ethernet bridge like this which plugs into the laptop with a network cable and does the wireless bit instead of the laptop.

Hope you get his problems fixed.

You should remove Norton using the Norton Removal Tool and install Microsoft Security Essentials. It'll do a better job for far less of a performance hit.

RAM upgrading is relatively easy (he needs to take the battery out before he starts and you'll need a small cross-head screwdriver) but you can't upgrade a graphics card in a laptop. It's soldered on to the motherboard. You'd need a new laptop with a built-in NVidia or ATI graphics card.

In my experience wireless connection dropouts like that are almost always down to interference from neighbours' routers, not any problem with the machine or router. Look up the instructions for how to change the wireless channel your router and try moving to a channel some distance away e.g, if you are on channel 9, try channel 5 and see if there is any improvement.

Ideally, you should use Inssider to choose a channel that has minimal interference, rather than just picking a channel at random. I am 90% certain that picking the right channel will be the solution to the wireless problems.

For best results with Inssider, you need to run it for a while, as routers are turned on and off over time, so a channel may appear clear at certain times, but not at other times. You should also run it both at the location where the laptop is used and also at the location of the router, as either the laptop, the router, or both could be affected by interference.

Another thought is, when you say the wireless is switched off, does it just drop the connection and automatically reconnect or does he have to switch the wireless back on? Could he actually be pressing a button or key that turns the wireless off?

CruelAndUnusualParenting, thanks for that tip. I've checked on the router and it's set to automatically chose a channel but on the Netmanager I can see which channel the surrounding wifis are on so maybe I can set it to different channel.

Last night for some reason none of the neighbours were online so ds got to play for an hour with no problems. Usually when it goes off he has to wait a few minutes then it goes back on but he can't get back into his game.

Thanks again.

Out of interest, where does he put the laptop when he's using it? On his lap or a pillow? Or on a table? I'm wondering if the cooling vents are getting blocked so it's slowing itself down to avoid overheating.

Snorbs, last night for a change he was on his bed with it on his lap but he usually sits at his desk.

Admylin.

I note you said he uses Hamachi. This is a VPN software which is free. It's actually a very clever piece of software but the few times I've used it, performance has been terrible. I assume they only have so much capacity for free users.

So the key question for me is when he gets kicked off the game, if he fires up his Internet browser and goes to Google, does it work? This will tell you if his laptop has a wireless issue or if it's just a problem with the VPN. I suspect Internet will be fine and it's the VPN which is the problem.

What is the game called? I suspect the reason the laptop is slow is that it is quite low powered by modern standards. Did you buy the laptop from new? 2GB RAM and such a processor isn't very common for a Thinkpad 18 months old.

Niceguy, I'll tell him to check that when he's using Hamachi again. He did write to them on their user board a couple of days ago to ask if there has been a problem but hasn't checked his mail yet.

I bought it new, 18 months ago and it cost around 400GBP. I think he will need a better one eventually, he can afford it! It was really just for school, power point presentations for projects and online researching for homework and such like. He's only started playing this game a few months ago.

I suspect that automatically chosen channels are probably set up on connection and don't adjust when neighbours come on. I could be wrong though, that's just an assumption on my part. Your router documentation will probably not be informative on this point, but it might be worth checking. Google can undoubtedly find some relevant information.