leesmithg Posted March 29, 2014 Share Posted March 29, 2014 My partners Laptop, an acer, Windows 7 x64 sp1 4 g.b. r.a.m. has become laggy. It boots up slow, it hangs, to navigate is a nightmare, having to log off to get up and running again. It is two years old and has less than 50 hours use. Any ideas on how to get rid of the hang and boot quicker? I am currently running a system file check sfc /scannow Hopefully that might give a clue or two. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xahid Posted March 29, 2014 Share Posted March 29, 2014 use CCleaner & clean up everything. & remove all the useless programs, use any third party bloatware removal & search for spywares etc ... xrobwx71 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
srbeen Posted March 29, 2014 Share Posted March 29, 2014 Slow systems are a nightmare to problem solve. Try other OS software (live ubuntu disc comes to mind) to eliminate hardware problems. They shouldn't persist and the OS should be fairly snappy once everything is loaded to RAM. You may spend hours on a forum troubleshooting software problems, installing more malware or bloatware or creating further registry problems... For the sake of time I really suggest giving up and totally reinstalling, unless you absolutely can't. Do a backup (think 7 can backup to USB drive or network in itself) then reinstall and restore the backup. Also note which devices are installed in your device manager. You will need drivers more than likely, Hard if you don't know what it is but very easy if you use a logical approach. find the HW ID, http://www.wikihow.com/Find-Hardware-ID, and copy it to google. It'll most likely spit the device name back at you, then find drivers for that device. IF you are super paranoid you can install fresh to another drive, then copy/restore from slow drive to new format until its working, then wipe the backup/old drive. You can also dump the drive using imaging software like linux/dd to a USB drive or network share as a gzip file (will take a long time) then do whatever and if it don't work or turns out wasn't software you can restore right back to where you started. Either way before starting to screw with it backup what you can. Its always nice to revert to the last step. If I had to guess WIndows Update did a bad update and you got a screwed up driver somewhere thats causing the comp to slow down, or a driver corrupted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xrobwx71 Posted March 29, 2014 Share Posted March 29, 2014 use CCleaner & clean up everything. & remove all the useless programs, use any third party bloatware removal & search for spywares etc ... also, Malwarebytes is a good start for the spyware and ummm malware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leesmithg Posted March 29, 2014 Author Share Posted March 29, 2014 I have cleaned the system dry. I am currently running a spybot program and a full NIS2014 system scan. I hope I can report good news. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammyinnit Posted March 29, 2014 Share Posted March 29, 2014 Even though its had very little use, I'm a firm believer that in any system, the biggest bottleneck is drive read/write speed. While you're mono might support high transfer, drives can deteriorate and cause that bottleneck, and I've noticed it more so in laptops. Still, it could just be software side faults. But personally, I'd rather try and go the way of SSD in a laptop for OS then use external storage for anything else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(Account no longer active) Posted March 29, 2014 Share Posted March 29, 2014 I'd test the RAM first: http://www.memtest.org/#downiso (recommend auto-installer for USB key version). Do at least three passes. If there's no errors, I'd then boot into Safe Mode and see if that runs normally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammyinnit Posted March 29, 2014 Share Posted March 29, 2014 Mobo* Sorry, I'm not quite used to this mobile interface. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cork1958 Posted March 29, 2014 Share Posted March 29, 2014 Here's another vote for Malwarebytes. I also like SuperAntiSpyware, even if some of the people here think it's junk now a days! Also try Hitman pro and TDSSkiller. If you have the time, and really want to scan it thoroughly, get the Kaspersky Rescue Disc also. http://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/rescuedisk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luc2k Posted March 29, 2014 Share Posted March 29, 2014 I'd also check the HDD's health if I were you with something like Hard Disk Sentinel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leesmithg Posted March 29, 2014 Author Share Posted March 29, 2014 Health is fine, spybot taking for ever to scan. So is NIS2014. I might during the week restore to factory defaults and re-store software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Warwagon MVC Posted March 29, 2014 MVC Share Posted March 29, 2014 Even though the health shows up as fine, if it was me (because I have a copy laying around, many actually) I would run spinrite on that drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leesmithg Posted March 29, 2014 Author Share Posted March 29, 2014 R.A.M. test is 10/10. Programs are slow to open that might be a clue. I just ran a pcpitstop scan and it said the laptop is in the top 15% of world, specifications and download speed. No problems what-so-ever. I will go back to factory settings and see if that helps. Thanks for everyones help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammyinnit Posted March 29, 2014 Share Posted March 29, 2014 I'd say HDD. If ram checks out there's no other bottleneck within the computer other than HDD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Warwagon MVC Posted March 29, 2014 MVC Share Posted March 29, 2014 R.A.M. test is 10/10. Programs are slow to open that might be a clue. I just ran a pcpitstop scan and it said the laptop is in the top 15% of world, specifications and download speed. No problems what-so-ever. I will go back to factory settings and see if that helps. Thanks for everyones help. One thing i'd recommend is downloading HD tune and run an error scan on the drive and see if any little red dots show up. I've used it a few times on customer PC' remotely where spinrite wasn't an option. it was quite effective. Wouldn't actually Fixed anything, but it would let me know if there were bad sectors on the drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auditor Posted March 29, 2014 Share Posted March 29, 2014 Just format it and reinstall. Start fresh, this will save much of your time and headache. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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