Registry cleaner.

cosmowillie53

My laptop is going very slow on startup. I ran a registry cleaner earlier today but didn't sign up so I didn't actually clear anything out.
However the results showed that there were Junk files -597 MB. 2400 items.
Privacy items 65. Performance problem items 2. Registry problems 161.

What are your views on the above.
Thanks

Dempsey

get ccleaner, good free cleaner

mrsoundie

Dempsey wrote: »

get ccleaner, good free cleaner

I concur.

cosmowillie53

Thanks for replies above.
I also used ccleaner and it tells me there are no problems.
Thanks.

Dempsey

cosmowillie53 wrote: »

Thanks for replies above.
I also used ccleaner and it tells me there are no problems.
Thanks.

Trust ccleaner. The other program was probably fishing for money

cosmowillie53

Will do and thanks for help.
Do you have any idea how I can sort out my problem which is going on for awhile now.
In order to to switch from one user to another I have to turn computer off and then back on again which takes about 5/6 minutes in total.
Log off ..switch user or ctrl alt delete doesn't work anymore.
Thanks

Irish Steve

before you do anything else, try running defraggler, from the same company as ccleaner, and then run malwarebytes anti malware, and see what that finds, there could be all manner of things that are not viruses, but have the ability to slow the machine down significantly

In passing, what operating system are you using, and how much memory does the machine have?

beauf

What programs and services are loading on startup?

What AV are you using.

What OS is this?

How old is the laptop?

+1 on defraggler.

cosmowillie53

Thanks a million folks....logoff/on seems to be working again.
I used Piniform defraggler (ccleaner) . It tells me the disc health is good. I now have 19.2 GB free space of a capacity of 74.4.
Before defrag it was 11.2 free.
I ran Malwarebytes anti malware . ..result was no objects found.

I have a six year old Toshiba Satellite Windows Vista with 2gb .
Microsoft security essentials Av installed and run regularly .
I dont know whats loading on startup..

As this computer is used for emails/photos (about 1000 small) and general browsing what could be taking up all the space.

Thanks for all the help.

White Heart Loon

You can check and disable what's launching at startup in ccleaner, tools->startup.With only 2GB ram you're going to need to keep an eye on things

cosmowillie53

Thanks.
It shows there are 28 enabled.

White Heart Loon

cosmowillie53 wrote: »

Thanks.
It shows there are 28 enabled.

Disable the ones not needed each time you boot

Irish Steve

OK, as has been mentioned, 2Gb is marginal memory for Vista, it will run, but not ideal, I don't know if it's worth putting more in that machine, or even if it will take it, a lot of machines of that vintage were max 2 Gb memory, which is becoming a problem with all the other stuff that needs to be run

Looks like Ccleaner got rid of quite a bit of old stuff, and I will bet that one of the larger areas was the browser cache, and that needs to be cleared regularly, (probably once a month) to keep the browser response time respectable, especially with a memory size that's not optimal.

It might be worth checking some of the options in Ccleaner that are off by default, and making sure that the browser index.dat files get deleted, as they don't shrink automatically.

It's so long since I set up Ccleaner, I can't remember how many of the options are off by default, on the machine here, the last 2 for IE, the last 1 for Explorer, the last 2 for System, and for Advanced, I only have pre fetch selected, the rest are off.

See how that goes.

Cheers

cosmowillie53

Irish Steve wrote: »

OK, as has been mentioned, 2Gb is marginal memory for Vista, it will run, but not ideal, I don't know if it's worth putting more in that machine, or even if it will take it, a lot of machines of that vintage were max 2 Gb memory, which is becoming a problem with all the other stuff that needs to be run

Looks like Ccleaner got rid of quite a bit of old stuff, and I will bet that one of the larger areas was the browser cache, and that needs to be cleared regularly, (probably once a month) to keep the browser response time respectable, especially with a memory size that's not optimal.

It might be worth checking some of the options in Ccleaner that are off by default, and making sure that the browser index.dat files get deleted, as they don't shrink automatically.

It's so long since I set up Ccleaner, I can't remember how many of the options are off by default, on the machine here, the last 2 for IE, the last 1 for Explorer, the last 2 for System, and for Advanced, I only have pre fetch selected, the rest are off.

See how that goes.

Cheers

Things were going well for me there for awhile but I got a bit lost with the last paragraph. (a real novice here).
hanks for your patience.

little man disorder

cc cleaner+1
try enable fast user switching if its turned off and then you can just switch users on the fly.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/89939-fast-user-switching.html

other than cc clener I could not recommend any other registry cleaner they generally do more harm than good

beauf

After 6yrs . If it were me I'd do a clean install of the OS. But I think thats beyond cosmo.

I'd look into turning off services you don't use. But the problem is you won't know which ones to disable.

So instead maybe un-install any apps you don't use.

cosmowillie53

Thanks for all the help and interest folks.....BUT..
Unfortunately I'm back to square one re start up.
I logged off earlier... another user log on for awhile and then logged off and closed the laptop lid down. I logged in awhile ago ( entered my password) but when I did so I just got a blank(ish) screen. I had to turn off and on again in order to log in. When I'm in computer works fine.
Any ideas.

Dempsey

Things like that make me avoid having profiles on my computers. Never worth the hassle.

Have you installed all the latest windows updates including service packs?

Ash.J.Williams

cosmowillie53 wrote: »

My laptop is going very slow on startup. I ran a registry cleaner earlier today but didn't sign up so I didn't actually clear anything out.
However the results showed that there were Junk files -597 MB. 2400 items.
Privacy items 65. Performance problem items 2. Registry problems 161.

What are your views on the above.
Thanks

before you do anthing you should remove all non critical programmes from startup. Everytime i check a pc nearly all prgrams are set to start on boot...usually you run MSCONFIG and untick all programs bar windows and AV....definite results

Irish Steve

cosmowillie53 wrote: »

Things were going well for me there for awhile but I got a bit lost with the last paragraph. (a real novice here).
hanks for your patience.

OK, sorry about that. On the cleaner section, there are several sub sections in that, the first is for Internet explorer. I have all but the last 2 selected(ticked).

For Explorer, all but the last one selected.

For system, all except the last 2

For advanced the only ones I suggest selecting would be old prefetch data. It might be worth also selecting the first, windows event logs, but that probably is set to default size, so won't be massive or slowing things down too much. You don't need to do that every time you run ccleaner either, as the information in the logs may be helpful in recovering after a crash or other failure, so always clearing it may be counter productive

On the user switching situation, it will be worth running Ccleaner in each account, as there are some areas in Vista (and later) that are specific to each user, and accessing and cleaning them from another account is not automatic, even if the other account has administrator access. I've not done that much digging into the exact why on that, I'm just aware that it's a hassle related to the User account control system that came with Vista and later.

The other thing will be that each account has settings in startup that apply only to that account, so the fact that you've got rid of some stuff in account A doesn't mean that it won't then run when you log into account B.

cosmowillie53

I'm back on track again and computer opening properly most of the time 7/10 times so nearly there I hope.

I have changed startups on each a/c to the bare minimum as suggested above.

Where do I check to see if I have an up to date service pack installed.

Irish Steve: I have completed all you suggested.

As there is a total size of 74.3 GB and there is free space of 19.2 GB I wonder what is using up the balance . As I said above this computer isn't used very much .

Thanks

White Heart Loon

Get treesize to see what's using up the space, it's most likely system restore.
http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/

Something I do on Vista pc's to give them a proper going over. I turn off system restore, then set ccleaner to clean free space, defragment fully with defraggler, then turn on system restore

danjo-xx

Where do I check to see if I have an up to date service pack installed.

Right click my computer, or just 'computer' on the start menu, Not a shortcut to my computer, then 'Properties' and you should see the details there.

beauf

White Heart Loon wrote: »

Get treesize to see what's using up the space, it's most likely system restore.
http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/

Something I do on Vista pc's to give them a proper going over. I turn off system restore, then set ccleaner to clean free space, defragment fully with defraggler, then turn on system restore

Treesize is a great app.

cosmowillie53

White Heart Loon wrote: »

Get treesize to see what's using up the space, it's most likely system restore.
http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/

Something I do on Vista pc's to give them a proper going over. I turn off system restore, then set ccleaner to clean free space, defragment fully with defraggler, then turn on system restore

I have downloaded Treesize and done a scan which throws up a lot of info . What am I to look for in there ?

White Heart Loon

cosmowillie53 wrote: »

I have downloaded Treesize and done a scan which throws up a lot of info . What am I to look for in there ?

It shows you what directories are taking up the space

cosmowillie53

Another bit of info...
When I log off and close lid on laptop it most likely will need to be turned off and started again . What happens is I log on and get to the welcome screen where it stays for awhile and then it goes to a blue(ish) screen where all I can see is the curser. At that point I need to turn off/on and log in again.

Irish Steve

You have something running, maybe a browser helper, or similar, that is taking all of the CPU, or is waiting for a response from the web, or it's getting locked into checking for updates from Microsoft and a load of other vendors, or a combination of all of these, and it's not unusual for the CPU to be bogged down, my parents have an older desktop machine that is memory limited, and it gets the same issues on a regular basis, last time I was sorting it, I spent the better part of a day and a half on line from here sorting it out.

Do you have anyone you know and trust that would be able to have an independent look at this, without seeing exactly what's going on first hand, it's almost impossible to give the sort of detailed instructions on how to clean this up in order to get it working reliably again.

Sorry I can't be more specific, but there are just so many areas of possible problem, deciding exactly which one it is verges on black magic:D

cosmowillie53

Thinks don't look good to good for this old machine.. Unfortunately the only people around with computer skills work in the repair shop and I'd like to keep away from repair shops if I can.
Is there a program that will check whats taking up the cpu etc.

Cuddlesworth

cosmowillie53 wrote: »

Thinks don't look good to good for this old machine.. Unfortunately the only people around with computer skills work in the repair shop and I'd like to keep away from repair shops if I can.
Is there a program that will check whats taking up the cpu etc.

Alt-Ctrl-Del ---> Taskmanager

Although, in fairness its a 6 year old machine,a six year old Vista install and more specifically a six year old mechanical hard-drive. A new SSD hard-drive and new OS install would make the world of difference to it.

Irish Steve

Alt-Ctrl-Del ---> Taskmanager gets you into what's going on, then you want to look at performance, if the CPU is high, to find out what's high, select the processes tab, and you can get that sorted by CPU usage by clicking on the CPU box, so that they get sorted by CPU, which will either be highest to lowest, or the other way round, if it's the wrong way click it again.

That will tell you which processes are using most CPU, give us some clues about usage and what is using it