DH's laptop is very slow - can I do anything to speed it up?

[Katymac]

I have done
Disk Clean up
Defrag
Uninstalled everything he doesn't use

What do I do next?

TIA

Goodness that thread ended abruptly

Hmm

I do wonder if it's just "broke"

I might take off the back & hoover it out?

Anyone think that might help?

no,don't think it would.As c drive is still using over 25%.
Googled teatimer exe and found alot of people think it slows computers down- see this thread pc advisor- here

OK firstly don't just move "My Documents" from C: to D:. Many things will expect "My Documents" to exist on C: and will have problems or behave oddly if it's not there.

So if you've moved it put it back.

Next don't even consider putting Windows 7 on there yet, Windows 7 is really rather demanding and your machine hasn't got the most disk space so I'm guessing it's not that powerful.

TeaTimer.exe is a part of SpyBot and it does sound more than a bit dodgy, uninstall SpyBot.

Then I would recommend downloading and installing this:
www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php

It's a great and reliable piece of software that will hunt through your machine looking for bad stuff.

The amount of free space you have while not good isn't really that bad either. One quick thing to check is that you empty the Recycle Bin on your desktop. When you delete files they don't really go until you empty the bin so you don't get the space back.

So for now.

1. Uninstall Spybot
2. Restore c:\mydocuments
3. Empty the Trash
4. Install Ad Aware and run a full scan.

I didn't move 'My Docs' I just moved my docs (onto a USB stick)

I will uninstall spybot

The recycle bin empties everytime I close the computer

& I will load & run that new thing

Back in a few hours as I am at work

Hmm. I have spybot too. I might uninstall mine and follow BPs steps. Things are getting slower and slower with mine, and just now, when I tried to remove (more) programs, the add/remove link won't work either.

I just analysed disk space again, and last week I had 8% and now have only 4% (despite having removed loads of programs and all music and pics that were still there. )

I think my laptop might just be dying.

4% free space is probably going to be a problem, unless the disk is huge.

Have you emptied the recyle bin (PC) or trash (Mac).

What machine do you have? Help can then be provided to track down where that space has gone.

Hi BP- I've now managed to get 15% free by doing disk cleanup and defrag.

Things seem to be chugging on a bit faster, I'm on a Sony Vaio laptop. 32Gb memory. It's 5 yrs old which is obviously about 187 in computer terms! Might be time to upgrade methinks.

Thanks for your help, and apologies to katymac for hijack!

Bucharest, 15% is better (I've always worked with the rough idea in my head that keeping about 20% free is a good measure) but it's still not that great.

If you do want to get some more space back or work out where what you have is gone (a 32gb disk isn't big at all) then start a new thread up and someone will lend you a hand.

The biggest advice I've got though is to run AdAware, which I mentioned and linked to above, and to access Task Manager (CTRL, ALT and DEL then Task Manager) and see what processes are taking up your memory and CPU time by sorting on those values and watching what stays near the top.

That ad-aware won't load

I am getting quite bored with this - sorry to be such a pain

hi,not surprises katymac it took an age to load on my netbook and its only a month old!!

Oh - that makes me feel slightly better

DH better be nice to me after all this

what about trying a system restore?
have you scanned for viruses?
you cd try uninstalling adaware and try another free spyware programme from cnet download.com
Just googled "Acer laptop slow"

Found an interesting forum thread if you can make head/tail of it.
HERE

I'm a bit concerned that AdAware won't load, it's quite common for "bad" software to try and prevent "bad software detection" software from running...

If it does eventually load and run then do let it do it's thing even if it takes all night, it's pretty good at finding stuff that you wouldn't want to be there.

That thread seems to be saying that various Acer utilities are rubbish and are responsible for slowing the machine down.

Following the "Solutions" from c.hilding could be a good plan.

Do try the "Task Manager" thing I described above and see if anything in particular is chewing up your CPU time.

oh after reading more of above thread its not actually much use.

What about this
If your virus/spyware free, there are a couple things you can do get your computer working faster. If you using your computer for normal stuff and not gaming. You don't always need more RAM you just need to perform a few maintenance tasks.

First, if you haven't cleaned your registry in a while, this is necessary. Your registry holds all the information regarding updates, installs, un-installs etc. Each one of those events produces a key. That key needs your PC's resources and free space. So, if you clean your registry, you make more resources available for speed. Do a registry scan if you got more than 20 errors you should clean it.

1. Clear your Windows cache files, this is your temporary file. It can grow up to a large volume and stop your computer from using RAM properly. In a sense slow it down by preventing it from using free space.Here is how:

1. Quit Internet Explorer, Firefox, or any other web browser
2. Click Start, click "Control Panel", and then double-click "Internet Options".
3. On the General tab, click "Delete Files" under Temporary Internet Files.
4. In the Delete Files dialog box, click to select the "Delete all offline content" check box , and then click OK.
5. Click OK.

1. Manage your startups. Your excess CPU usage is due to too many programs running in the background. You can cut these to barebones by alter your msconfig. Here is how:

1. Open your Start menu.
2. Click Run
3. In the command screen type "msconfig.exe"
4. In the "system configuration utility",click either "service" or "startup" tab
5. Uncheck all programs that your are no longer using.
6. Click "OK"

you could download ccleaner here
That will help you do all of above recommendations.

A note on point 2... That will only clean the temporary files used by Internet Explorer and not those used by other web browsers (e.g. Firefox). Each browser will have it's own unique way of clearing itself down.

While the cache will take up disk space and lack of disk space can cause a slow down I don't think that this is what is going on here.

Point 3 is a good one but unfortunately Windows has many ways of starting things running in the background that won't be visible using the method.

The key to using Step 3 well is to find out what is taking up the processor time or memory in the machine and then dealing with it. For that do the Task Manager thingy.

I believe ccleaner will also remove the crap left on other browsers not just IE. so try that way. Agree though badgerpaws, maybe more RAM would be better option.

More RAM might help but working out what's chewing up the current resources before giving it more to waste would be better and will also hopefully stop it happening again.

hi, sorry for disappearing

OK, you are running Teatimer.exe and it is taking up 113504 K of memory - that is a lot. Apparently it is part of a anti-spyware program called Spybot and often slows down PCs so you could remove it - check this out.

Also, the system process shouldn't be taking up nearly that amount of memory (you say 88500 K). Sadly there could be loads of reasons for this but often anti-virus programs are the worst culprits so you might want to try fiddling around with those settings. Definitely cleaning out all temporary files too.

Do the temporary files empty on disk cleanup?

I have uninstalled Spybot

I have finally got ad-aware to load & it is 1 hour into a scan..... with nothing found

2 hours in & it's still going

has the adaware finished yet? did it find anything?

It finished some time last night

It found 102 & dealt with them - but no change it's still unbearably slow

I'm getting ready to give up