PC is super slow- any advise, or failing that good laptop deals.

[wensleydale]

My laptop is getting to the point of slowness which makes me think a new one may be in order.

I've defragged the drive and tried to take of programs I dont use, but it still appears to be on it's last legs- any advise for final things to try before I give into the "simple" option of buying a new one.

If the above fails to work, anyone got any good laptop deals available at the moment?

[mattydinx]

How old is your computer and what Spec is it? - It could just be, as you say, on it's last legs.

• Try running "Disk Cleanup" from Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools
• Run "CCleaner" (available at FileHippo.com) to clean out any old unused temporary files that "Disk Cleanup" misses
• Check your computer for Spyware/Adware/Malware using Malwarebytes Anti-Malware which could be sitting dormant in the background using up resources.

Bring up the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc. Under "performance" look under "physical memory" See what your Total memory is compared to the graph above it.

You could be running things in the background (Phone software, gaming applications, Anti-Virus, etc) which you no longer use which could be removed.

[wensleydale]

It's one of these-

Acer Aspire 5920 / Core 2 Duo T5450 1.66GHz / 2GB / 160GB / DVD-SM / 15.4 inch / Vista Home Premium / Laptop / Notebook (LX.AKV0X.146)

Pretty old now- 3/4 years??

Might just be best to bite the bullet and buy a new one.

[mattydinx]

There might be some life in the old girl yet, processor isn't the fastest but it's still got two physical cores so that's something.

You could try completely backing up your data and doing a factory restore, taking it back to when you first got it.

Obviously there's the pain of getting everything re-installed that you need but so long as you only re-install precisely that...it should be a little quicker.

Another (cheaper) option, rather than replacing the whole laptop is to upgrade the RAM. Its not hard to do and would set you back around £45 to upgrade to 4GB.
http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/list...205920&Cat=RAM

You could also consider upgrading your hard drive, again, not hard to do!
Solid State Hard Drives are lightning quick and have plummeted in price lately (less than £1/gigabyte) you could get a 120GB SSD which would majorly speed up your system (boot times of less than 20 seconds!)

[Sapphire Disco]

You could also consider upgrading your hard drive, again, not hard to do!
Solid State Hard Drives are lightning quick and have plummeted in price lately (less than £1/gigabyte) you could get a 120GB SSD which would majorly speed up your system (boot times of less than 20 seconds!)

Any idea how I can find out what solid state my laptop will take ?

[Ecstatic Events]

Advanced System Care 5 is available as a free download.

http://www.iobit.com/advancedsystemcareper.html

I have it on all my machines. Works a treat!

[wensleydale]

Thanks guys.
Have tried the suggestions and things are still not much better.

Have been looking at these-
http://www.ebuyer.com/288813-lenovo-...laptop-m58fxuk
Any thoughts?

[mattydinx]

Thanks guys.
Have tried the suggestions and things are still not much better.

Have been looking at these-
http://www.ebuyer.com/288813-lenovo-...laptop-m58fxuk
Any thoughts?

It'll certainly be a hell of a lot quicker than your C2D!

The 2nd Gen 'Core' processors from Intel are fantastic chips, I'm running an i5 2500k in my desktop PC and it ploughs through anything I throw at it.

We really rate the Lenovo stuff at work although we normally spec the ThinkPad range rather than the IdeaPad (but chances are you don't need the additional features the ThinkPad range offer)

Looks like a good deal to me!

[wensleydale]

It'll certainly be a hell of a lot quicker than your C2D!

The 2nd Gen 'Core' processors from Intel are fantastic chips, I'm running an i5 2500k in my desktop PC and it ploughs through anything I throw at it.

We really rate the Lenovo stuff at work although we normally spec the ThinkPad range rather than the IdeaPad (but chances are you don't need the additional features the ThinkPad range offer)

Looks like a good deal to me!

Thanks Matty.

[DazzyD]

I've sort of become the PC guru at work after I'd removed a virus from a colleagues laptop - now everyone comes up to me with their problems!

I'd suggest following Matty's tips about looking for unwanted resource-hogging software running in the background be it valid programs or malware. However, a girl at work came to me with the same problem. Her laptop had become very slow and was taking literally hours to perform simple tasks. Turned out it was some sort of pre-warning that the HDD was about to give up the ghost (an option which I hadn't considered at first). Her HDD drive died completely about a week later. A new HDD and everything is running fine and dandy now!