Laptop really sluggish

whitelightrider

I think Im starting to lose my mind here.
I have an Acer laptop which is about 7 months old. But its really sluggish. Watching Youtube or a movie the cpu can jump up to 100% and the picture takes ages to catch up with the vocals.

It just seems strange that with the spec below that it hangs alot and the cpu jumps to 100% alot. Id be using Google Chrome to browse and dont have any big packages apart from Office 2003.

Acer Aspire 6530G
4gb RAM
250 GB HDD
AMD Turion X2

Alanstrainor

What virus scanner are you using? Try running ccleaner. It usually works well at speeding things up.

whitelightrider

Alanstrainor wrote: »

What virus scanner are you using? Try running ccleaner. It usually works well at speeding things up.

Hiya. Using AVG at the minute. Was using Avast for a while and initially thought that was the problem.
Ill give ccleaner a shot.

poncho000

Alanstrainor wrote: »

What virus scanner are you using? Try running ccleaner. It usually works well at speeding things up.

Thats a good idea but also try the following:

go to start menu, then click run(or you could just hit the (windows key + R). Type in msconfig and press enter. A dialog box with a number of tabs will then appear. Go to the startup tab and disable any unecessary programs(there are probably a lot of them).

Also after using ccleaner u might try defragmenting your hard drive aswell. That should do the trick.

phill106

Those are good "bandaid" steps, which may make some improvement. If you want to go the whole hog though and get it sorted all at once, bacekup your data onto an external drive, and wipe and reinstall your laptop from the media supplied. Will make a huge difference.
Even better, if your laptop isnt that old, perhaps you are entitled to a free windows 7 upgrade? Ideal time to do so if you are!

steps_3314

phill106 wrote: »

Those are good "bandaid" steps, which may make some improvement. If you want to go the whole hog though and get it sorted all at once, bacekup your data onto an external drive, and wipe and reinstall your laptop from the media supplied. Will make a huge difference.
Even better, if your laptop isnt that old, perhaps you are entitled to a free windows 7 upgrade? Ideal time to do so if you are!

Agree totally. Backit up (photos etc) and format the drive before re-installing the OS.

While you will get some improvements by running Crapcleaner and disabling other services you will never get it the way you want

whitelightrider

Ill back everything up tonight.
I did a reinstall last week, but I hadnt formatted the hard drive before hand.
Its just weird when youre surfing or watching a movie its like the laptop it trying to catch up with itself. Theres 4GB of RAM so that shouldnt be happening.

kmick

Youtube could be down to latency on your internet connection. When I had high latency 90ms+ youtube was terrible. Get rid of AVG free its become a dog and use Avira instead its slower to update but less intrusive. Use ccleaner to get rid of unwanted rubbish files and make sure to defragment weekly and use dick cleanup again weekly. Also check you harddrive is not full with movies and music. That will kill any computer.

whitelightrider

kmick wrote: »

Youtube could be down to latency on your internet connection. When I had high latency 90ms+ youtube was terrible. Get rid of AVG free its become a dog and use Avira instead its slower to update but less intrusive. Use ccleaner to get rid of unwanted rubbish files and make sure to defragment weekly and use dick cleanup again weekly. Also check you harddrive is not full with movies and music. That will kill any computer.

Had the same problem though when I was using Avast so thought switching to AVG might be better. But Ill give Avira a shot too.
No movies on the hard drive now. Ive got a healthy 77GB free. Also didnt think it would matter with 4GB of Ram as long as you have a couple of GB free.

phill106

make sure you download all the latest drivers after too, particurlarly the graphics card, could be slowing you down.

whitelightrider

All Ive got running now is this boards tab and 1 other with a streaming tv show on Google Chrome. Nothing else and my CPU usage is running between 75% and 95%.

SteelyDanJalapeno

whitelightrider wrote: »

All Ive got running now is this boards tab and 1 other with a streaming tv show on Google Chrome. Nothing else and my CPU usage is running between 75% and 95%.

You said you were running avast before avg?

you dont by any chance have both of them still installed do you?

could be your problem, you should always only have one,

whitelightrider

Horgan wrote: »

You said you were running avast before avg?

you dont by any chance have both of them still installed do you?

could be your problem, you should always only have one,

Nope. Removed Avast completely before installing AVG. Thought thats what was causing the issue. Its just really weird because I thought the spec of the laptop was pretty decent until this started happening. Performance is running above 65% for the last few hours.

Capt'n Midnight

cable842 wrote: »

you could try out a linux mint live cd for a week see if yea like it. and do a install and it will speed your computer up totally

Please read the charter about pimping other software.

And suggesting Linux as a fix for playing videos, you would need a lot of non-free codecs :rolleyes:

Capt'n Midnight

not sure if chrome has the add ons to do it , but firefox has several extensions that allow you to download videos

you can then see just how long the video takes to download,and could then play it offline in your favorite video player to see if it's still slow

cable842

linux mint is fully multi media and its an amazing system using it.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Please read the charter about pimping other software.

And suggesting Linux as a fix for playing videos, you would need a lot of non-free codecs :rolleyes:

phill106

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Please read the charter about pimping other software.

And suggesting Linux as a fix for playing videos, you would need a lot of non-free codecs :rolleyes:

Umm the charter advocates linuxat the very end!

Play nice now boys and girls! And L1nuX r0x!

adam

Capt'n Midnight

phill106 wrote: »

Umm the charter advocates linuxat the very end!

Play nice now boys and girls! And L1nuX r0x!

adam

LOL

Capt'n Midnight

cable842 wrote: »

linux mint is fully multi media and its an amazing system using it.

a few years ago the ability to network boot computers from just one running the live Knoppix CD was amazing

mint is little more than another skin for ubuntu with stuff from the multiverse repository built in http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9rd2a/linux_mint_the_perfect_starter_os_for_mac_and/

and none of this will help the OP speed up their PC ,
and you can't run Outlook 2003 on mint :rolleyes:


just because you have a hammer doesn't mean every problem is a nail.

Please stay on topic or the ban hammer will be taken down from the top shelf.

cable842

why would you want to use outlook ? so my computer can be open to viruses

Capt'n Midnight

cable842 wrote: »

why would you want to use outlook ? so my computer can be open to viruses

You've had plenty of warnings.

This thread is about a problem with a windows computer (which has outlook)

It's against the charter to keep pushing stuff no one has asked for, and it's really a bit rich considering how new you are to Linux.

cable842

sorry you gave me a infraction for what exactly you gave me no warning and it looks like you have got something against me.

I never said which outlook express and I didnt push anything I left 2 posts saying linux is not bad give it ago it wouldnt hurt

thats not fair what you did

and it's really a bit rich considering how new you are to Linux.

thats what you wrote thats spitefull.

whitelightrider

Folks, just to clarify. My problem seems to with the graphics part of the laptop - not Outlook, Windows, or Linux.

When I open Chrome or IE or Firefox and go to a site with graphics, videos or movies, the performance shoots up to 100%. The audio stays perfectly on track, but the video stalls and then tries to catch up.

We upgraded to 7MB BB this evening and I tried to watch a show online and had the very same issue. Im seriously thinking of dropping this laptop off the edge of the counter :mad:

Im at my wits end here as its a good spec machine. Next step is to either bring it back to see if there is a problem, or contact Acer direct.

I doubt that it's a fault with the laptop, most likely it's some sort of software issue. Have you tried using IE or Firefox to see if they perform any differently?

whitelightrider

Karsini wrote: »

I doubt that it's a fault with the laptop, most likely it's some sort of software issue. Have you tried using IE or Firefox to see if they perform any differently?

Yep. Tried all of them. I am watching Twilight on the laptop now and am using Chrome to write this. But the performance is over 80%. I dont have anything major installed. Office 2003, Chrome, Firefox, AVG and Windows Classic with the KLite codec. Response speed by moving around Chrome is dragging.

whitelightrider

Im wondering if Id be wasting my time actually formatting the laptop, and then using the system restore discs?

phill106

whitelightrider wrote: »

Im wondering if Id be wasting my time actually formatting the laptop, and then using the system restore discs?

nope, i think its the best thing to do, and its what acer would recommend as a final solution to rule out any software issues before even attempting to diagnose a hardware issue.
Do it now

Capt'n Midnight

whitelightrider wrote: »

Folks, just to clarify. My problem seems to with the graphics part of the laptop - not Outlook, Windows, or Linux.

Did you try downloading the videos and then playing them offline ?


videos are read in and then decoded by the processor and then sent to the video card, if any one of these are slow then the video will be slow.

Do a final check for malware before formatting on the off chance, and also make sure you have an AV installed before connecting the PC to the internet

whitelightrider

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Did you try downloading the videos and then playing them offline ?


videos are read in and then decoded by the processor and then sent to the video card, if any one of these are slow then the video will be slow.

Do a final check for malware before formatting on the off chance, and also make sure you have an AV installed before connecting the PC to the internet

Yep, same thing on a downloaded movie played offline. Actually same thing even on a DVD played.
Checked for Malware and also ran ccleaner.

Ill try formatting and do a fresh install.

Biggins

Download the trail version of Tuneup Utilities 2010 here: http://www.tuneup-software.co.uk/download/

Run the "1-Click Maintenance" ability.
Run the clean space utility.
Run the Defrag ability.

Those three alone (there is other more techie tools) will help speed-up, clean up and get rid a lot of stuff.
Also see the section in it for examining your start-up items (you can do this manually through "msconfig" but if you wan to play safer, do it through thus app).

Consider getting rid of all your sluggish intrusive anti-virus and spyware/malware tools.
Just install a very new but exceptionally good, FREE utility from Microsoft - "Microsoft Security Essentials" - found here: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

See how you get along with the above, you should see some serious change.

Redsoxfan

Biggins wrote: »

Consider getting rid of all your sluggish intrusive anti-virus and spyware/malware tools.
Just install a very new but exceptionally good, FREE utility from Microsoft - "Microsoft Security Essentials" - found here: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

Can MS Security Essentials cover all that AVG covers? I noticed the other night what a huge drain on the CPU the AVG scan was causing.