Need help - computer running super slow

[Kathe]

The past few days my laptop has been incredibly slow, especially online. Pages take a minute or two to load instead of seconds like normal. Some pages don't load at all. I run Kaspersky protection and it is up to date and updates daily. I just ran a scan and there is nothing found. Ugh I can't stand this. Any ideas???

[theislandtan]

Originally Posted by Kathe

The past few days my laptop has been incredibly slow, especially online. Pages take a minute or two to load instead of seconds like normal. Some pages don't load at all. I run Kaspersky protection and it is up to date and updates daily. I just ran a scan and there is nothing found. Ugh I can't stand this. Any ideas???

Right click your task bar and select "Task Manager". Click Performance and view CPU Usage. If it is above 50%, select processes, click CPU, and look for the application(s) using the the most processing.

Do the same for Mem Usage and VM size. Anything over 100 here can cause you're PC to slow down.

After that, you can google the process/Image Name for a description and to tell if it is bad or not.

[agk453]

Are you running IE8? or just downloaded it? Is that when it started to slow down? If so, try Firefox. I did this with my father-in-law's laptop and he saw an immediate improvement. Still bad, but at least he wasn't waiting 5 minutes for his home page to show up. Maybe it's something with add-ons in IE, maybe it's just that it's a pig, I don't know. But then again I think he only had 512mb RAM so maybe there just wasn't enough horsepower to run IE. Firefox seems to run a LOT leaner so may help.
Then there's the other standard things that you may have already done - defrag hard drive, delete cached pages in IE to name a couple.
FWIW ...

[summersun]

First thing is google and download malwarebytes anti-malware and run a scan with that, it's free. Kaspersky's is great software, probably the best anti-virus (along with BitDefender) but malwarebytes will catch a lot of major programs like rogue anti-spyware that act like legitimate windows programs that kaspersky's will miss.

Kaspersky's may also miss some spyware/adware, so if you're not running a program for that (Webroot Spysweeper is good) you should download Spybot Search and Destroy along with Lavasoft Ad-Aware (both free) and scan with both of those. Be sure to disable all these programs at startup as you don't want multiple anti-malware programs running at once, just leave Kaspersky's on startup.

After that, download CCleaner and have it scan for and delete unused files. Then use its registry scan feature to check for errors (don't worry about making a backup when it asks, CCleaner is reliable and doesn't make mistakes).

If that doesn't fix it, PM me and I'll see what I can do.

[Kathe]

OK, I already run CC cleaner, Spybot, Firefox and Ad-aware. It still wasn't working. Soooo......I have all of my docs, music and pics on an external HD so I just re-formatted by drive yesterday and now I'm back up and running nicely. It wasn't hard to do. Just have to load some programs back on which I will work on today. Don't know what it was but my computer is running like new again. Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I appreciate it!

[summersun]

Awsome. It's a sad fact that systems will slow down over time and there's nothing you can really do about it. Eventually you'll be using so much memory with core system processes that windows will start dipping in to the page file and then your PC will more or less grind to a halt. Re-installing windows is the only way way to really fix it when this happens or you could install additional memory.

Since you just re-installed the OS you should look in to Acronis TrueImage. It will make a complete backup of you computer, registry and everything. If you've got the space to store the image then you can re-install windows from that image with all your programs installed and settings just how you had them right down to your desktop background. Course, that only makes since if you make the image right after a fresh install, but depending on how many programs you install and all the settings you change it can be a huge time saver.

[Kathe]

Thanks I'll check it out!