Hey, Computer Guru’s!

[lessingejumeau]

So I have a laptop at home. I try to keep up on the antivirus/debuggers/disk clean-up/defragmenter and do a decent job of it. The computer is around 4 years old (the HD is about 2 years old) and SLOW AS HELL! The battery only lasts about ½ an hour or so, sometimes less than that, before it dies. It’s to the point that I’m basically using it as

Comments

[natalyakat]

Well... first, how large is your hard drive? More importantly, how many MB of RAM (Memory) does it have? And, what kind of processor and what is the processor's speed? All of these are factors in the "slowness" of a computer. (And more that I don't know about. But this is a start.)

Also, when was the last time you did a full scan? And, possible, since it is a Windows computer (right?), when was the last time you ran the "defragment" program?

[please note: I'm not a computer expert, but my mom was a computer tech, and taught me a few tricks.) Also, I can't check this at work, so if you want to chat more about it during the day tomorrow, email me! You know my addy.

[lessingejumeau]

As stated above, the disk drive frequently gets defragmented, debugged, scanned and cleaned-up. These processes happen at least once a month each, if not more. This helps to a point, but the computer still runs at half the speed it did when it was new. I think it has to do more with the battery (and the computer in general) being old.

Thanks for the input though. Unfortunately, like you said, you’re not an expert. Since I’ve been playing with computers for about 20 years now, I went into the military originally for electronics, and then went on to get an associates in electronics, I doubt there’s a whole lot you know that I don’t. Thanks again for playing though, but I was looking for input from the guru’s who work on (not just with) computers on a daily basis. ;-)

[tina_mv]

what do you mean on a monthly basis????!?!?!? That thing gets de-whatevers every damn week!!! Sometimes twice it seems.... stupid computer.... we need a new one... mine is a bit better than yours, but still toooooo sloooowwww!!! ;D

[nezhka2846]

I second the "How much RAM" does it have. You *may* be able to double the RAM, depending on how many slots the laptop has. This will help the speed a bit.
As for processor speed, there's nothing you can do to increase that. I would suggest deleting every extraneous program from the computer and defragging. You certainly don't need to defrag it as often as you are. :)
Another thing to check is which programs it starts during startup. A lot of the programs it runs (like virus scan) don't need to be started and kept running.

[lessingejumeau]

I don’t remember how much RAM it has, never cracked it open to see if there’s extra slots. There are a few programs that launch at startup (like Yahoo messenger) that don’t need to. The problem is that I don’t remember how to take them off the list of startup programs. I think it’s in the control panel somewhere, do you know how to get those off without completely deleting them? I don’t have many extra programs on there I use it for the couple games I have on there and mostly for internet. I do have a few pics and data files that are stored on there, but I’d need a memory stick to download them to. Know where I can get any cheap ones?