Laptop Question..

[catlady]

My laptop has been running super slow. Its only like 2 years old but its running like its 10 years old. I can't even go on youtube to play videos, they just skip around. I have a Toshiba Satellite. Is there something I can do for free that would make it run better? I have no idea why it started running this slow but it is quite annoying. Its a big reason I haven't been as active on the forum lately. It takes up to 2 minutes just for a thread to load. Sometimes I will be typing and it will just freeze up. I don't believe I have a virus, I scan for them all the time. I even clean out the cookies every week. So I have no idea what to do.

 

[CM Punk]

I'm not much a computer geek, so...

Use malwarebytes to check your viruses.
How much space do you have left in your harddrive?
Do you run lots of programs together?
If so, open up Task Manager > Processes and click on mem usage.Check what's the highest one being used.
I honestly do not know.

 

[catlady]

YOU CHANGED YOUR NAME.... AGAAAANE!? :mad1:

I use Norton so my computer gets scanned everyday.
I am not sure how much room I have left, but I don't use much. I don't play any games or have a butt load of music or anything like that.
I only run one thing at a time normally. It was never a issue with youtube until the past few months.

 

[Apoho Creed]

I'm not a tech geek but if it comes to speed it could be the router signal, might want to reset it.Worse comes to worse, reboot your Laptop.

 

[catlady]

I ironically didn't check the internet connection... lol
Its slow all around though so I figured that wasn't it. I mean is slow to open non-internet programs on my computer.

 

[Jonathan]

So the laptop freezes, or the web pages take a long time to load?

If it's the first one, you likely have a program open that's hogging the CPU, and being a Toshiba Satellite it likely doesn't have a very good one, or much RAM. Ctrl+Alt+Del. and open Task Manager, go to the processes tab and sort by Memory, look for ones using a lot of memory. (Exclude svchost) Write a list of some that are taking up the most.
Also, Norton absolutely fucksucks when it comes to performance. It's well known for hogging your usage so if you paid for it legit, wait for your subscription to expire (or if you don't care) uninstall it. Download a free copy of AVG or Avira, or if you can find a premium key (PM if you can't) for Malware Bytes' Anti-Malware, use that. I use MBAM for the fact that it doesn't slow your PC down, has one of the best detection rates and has website blocking/filesystem protection so if it thinks a website may be dodgy, stops you access it (sometimes produces false positives so you can allow access to the site with a click of the mouse.)

If the web pages are taking a long time to load, then it's your connection. Are you using wireless? If so, try an ethernet connection if you can. Also, do a speedtest.net (let it find the server itself) and post it here.

Also on task manager, on the processes tab, at the bottom it should say:
Processes: X, CPU Usage: X, Physical Memory: X, let me know what they say.

Also, download WinDirStat: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/windirstat/windirstat/1.1.2 installer re-release (more languages!)/windirstat1_1_2_setup.exe?r=http://windirstat.info/download.html&ts=1369838519&use_mirror=switch

It tells you what's taking up space on your hard drive. Could be a large hibernation or pager file clogging your hard drive and ultimately slowing everything down. Screenshot the results.


And stop deleting your cookies weekly. Cookies use very little space and unless you use IE they don't slow you down (unless you've never cleared them in like 10 years 1 - they don't do any harm and can actually be of use.

If you want, PM or Skype me the results if you don't want them here.

 

[Stopspot]

I use Norton .

There's the problem.

 

[catlady]

There's the problem.

Nortons bad? I paid for it lol Its not a free trial.

 

[Jonathan]

Nortons bad? I paid for it lol Its not a free trial.

>Ignores my helpful post
>Responds to something I said

:

Yes, Norton is absolute trash.

Copy and pasted from my post cause I'm lazy:

It's well known for hogging your usage so if you paid for it legit, wait for your subscription to expire (or if you don't care) uninstall it. Download a free copy of AVG or Avira, or if you can find a premium key (PM if you can't) for Malware Bytes' Anti-Malware, use that. I use MBAM for the fact that it doesn't slow your PC down, has one of the best detection rates and has website blocking/filesystem protection so if it thinks a website may be dodgy, stops you access it (sometimes produces false positives so you can allow access to the site with a click of the mouse.)

 

[Stopspot]

Nortons bad? I paid for it lol Its not a free trial.

Norton has a rep as a bad anti virus program. It along with Panda are or at least were considered the worst anti virus programs available. I have nothing but bad experiences with Norton. You can get free anti virus programs that work a lot better.

 

[Jonathan]

Norton has a rep as a bad anti virus program. It along with Panda are or at least were considered the worst anti virus programs available. I have nothing but bad experiences with Norton. You can get free anti virus programs that work a lot better.

Panda? I've never had any issues with it.

 

[Stopspot]

Panda? I've never had any issues with it.

Panda in essence became a virus for my grandparents back in like 2002-2003. The panda edition they had back then started locking down software and sections on the harddrive. Once we got rid of Panda we also found out that there wasn't a single virus on the computer so it wasn't in reaction to any form of virus or worm.

It might be better now but no one I know has used panda since.

 

[catlady]

So the laptop freezes, or the web pages take a long time to load?

If it's the first one, you likely have a program open that's hogging the CPU, and being a Toshiba Satellite it likely doesn't have a very good one, or much RAM. Ctrl+Alt+Del. and open Task Manager, go to the processes tab and sort by Memory, look for ones using a lot of memory. (Exclude svchost) Write a list of some that are taking up the most.
Also, Norton absolutely fucksucks when it comes to performance. It's well known for hogging your usage so if you paid for it legit, wait for your subscription to expire (or if you don't care) uninstall it. Download a free copy of AVG or Avira, or if you can find a premium key (PM if you can't) for Malware Bytes' Anti-Malware, use that. I use MBAM for the fact that it doesn't slow your PC down, has one of the best detection rates and has website blocking/filesystem protection so if it thinks a website may be dodgy, stops you access it (sometimes produces false positives so you can allow access to the site with a click of the mouse.)

If the web pages are taking a long time to load, then it's your connection. Are you using wireless? If so, try an ethernet connection if you can. Also, do a speedtest.net (let it find the server itself) and post it here.

Also on task manager, on the processes tab, at the bottom it should say:
Processes: X, CPU Usage: X, Physical Memory: X, let me know what they say.

Also, download WinDirStat: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/windirstat/windirstat/1.1.2 installer re-release (more languages!)/windirstat1_1_2_setup.exe?r=http://windirstat.info/download.html&ts=1369838519&use_mirror=switch

It tells you what's taking up space on your hard drive. Could be a large hibernation or pager file clogging your hard drive and ultimately slowing everything down. Screenshot the results.


And stop deleting your cookies weekly. Cookies use very little space and unless you use IE they don't slow you down (unless you've never cleared them in like 10 years 1 - they don't do any harm and can actually be of use.

If you want, PM or Skype me the results if you don't want them here.

I'll switch when it expires. and my top usage things are Firefox, AOL AIM (use it to talk to my husband when he's at work ), explorer (which I don't even use lol), the desktop thingy desktop windows manager.

 

[catlady]

Also, Malware Bytes' Anti-Malware? I never heard of that. I use to have AVG but stopped using it because it was giving my computer issues.

 

[Jonathan]

I'll switch when it expires. and my top usage things are Firefox, AOL AIM (use it to talk to my husband when he's at work ), explorer (which I don't even use lol), the desktop thingy desktop windows manager.

Wait, AOL is a process?
Explorer.exe you do use - it provides you with your task bar, start menu, basically your user interface.
Not sure what you mean by this "the desktop thingy desktop windows manager"

Malware Bytes is arguably the best anti virus software. Download MBAM for free and I'll get you a code.