Unbearably Slow Laptop - All Programs Not Responding

Paully D

Hi all,

I wonder if anyone can help me with a problem I'm having with my laptop these last couple of days. It's about 5 years old now and gets a huge amount of use on a daily basis, between performing work tasks, lots of streaming and browsing, so I'm thinking it might be a well of telling me it's on its death bed, but anyway:

All had been going fine up until yesterday, but ever since then when I try to open a browser (I've tried Chrome, Firefox and IE, all the same problem) it takes an absolute age for it to load and more often than not I'll get the "not responding" stuff. This is also happening when I try to go open documents, browse my pictures etc. Basically any time I try to do anything on the laptop it's unbearably slow.

I haven't put anything new on it that would cause it to do this. I regularly clean my cache etc. I have Microsoft Security Essentials and run scans through that which comes back clean, so I'm lost really.

As mentioned above, is it just on it's death bed after so many years of heavy use? Or is there anything else I could try?

Cheers.

mordeith

If you've backed up all important data you could reinstall the OS, or perform factory restore.

riclad

it should have at least 2gig ram,
at least 3 gig free hardrive space.
Download CCcleaner free program,
gets rid of all un needed files on drive c,

eg old zip files duplicate files,temp files, etc
if hardrive is full windows gets really slow,
it needs space to put temp ram files ,swap space .
uninstall old games etc programs you don,t use .http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-ways-to-speed-up-windows-7/

click on my computer ,drive c ,
free space = ?? gig

quaidox

or the hdd is begnning to fail, hence the slwodown....

riclad

https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner click free version download .
this will remove at least a few 100meg of old un needed files , old ,tmp files etc


quote
Faster Computer

Is your computer running slow? As it gets older it collects unused files and settings which take up hard drive space making it slower and slower. CCleaner cleans up these files and makes it faster instantly.

HugoRune

I had similar problems some time after upgrading to Windows 10 on a PC of similar age. You could try checking the disk activity in Task Manager. My disk utilisation was at 100% and would stay there all the time even though the computer appeared to be doing nothing. Solved oddly enough by turning off Windows notifications.

beauf

quaidox wrote: »

or the hdd is begnning to fail, hence the slwodown....

If the laptop is worth upgrading sticking a SSD would make a huge difference.

Otherwise reinstall windows. Its also makes a huge difference.

Old Hard drives are likely to fail so make sure you have a backup.

kodistar

Hi there,

Run crystal disk to see if it hard drive,after that I would suggest reinstall or upgrade your operating system.

Save the data you want to keep then clean install operating system that's it.

Hope I helped.

PropJoe10

Windows operating systems get very bogged down after a few years. I would always do a reinstall of the OS at least once a year, if possible. As Riclad said, running CCleaner should help - also, install Malwarebytes free version and run that.

riclad

Back up data,music , photos, video, and do a reinstall of windows ,
or use windows restore to go back a few months .
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ie/windows/system-restore-faq#1TC=windows-7

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-ways-to-speed-up-windows-7/


You could go through your system tool by tool and remove the offending software, but you might want to keep the underlying tool around and just prevent the helper from loading. This and more can be accomplished through the use of MSconfig, a tool that has long been a part of Windows. MSconfig allows you to selectively disable startup items and take other steps toward improving overall system performance.