PC Problems

[Norman Verona]

I think I know the answer so this is really for confirmation.

 

I have a Fujitsu PC running 7 pro.

 

It's about 4 years old. Never had a problem. It's set to do a weekly defrag and has AVG (paid for) anti virus.

 

The last week or so it has been getting slower and slower as the day goes on until about early evening it's almost impossible to use. Takes over a minute to open an email. Reboot and it start off fine. If left on overnight it needs to be rebooted in the morning.

 

 

At first I thought of opening it and reseating all the boards but then thought that a badly seated board would cause slow degradation. 

 

So, I'm now resigned to a reload of the OS. Problem is that I don't have a recent (ie in the last month) backup and as it takes 18 hours to back up to my external hard disc I won't get a full backup done as the machine is now.

 

Any thoughts?

[Captain Colonial]

I wonder if you just have a load of things running in the background.  Doesn't take much, iTunes updates are the worst, and before you know it, there's a dozen things running at start up, you're out of memory and everything grinds to a halt.

 

Try this:

 

Clicky

 

It allows you to control what loads at start up, or even delay the start of some thing, so you can prune it right back.  Free program, so worth a try, helped a few people I know.

[Norman Verona]

Thanks Scott, did that but no surprises. I've used the task mangler to see if any process is hogging the memory or cpu and nothing unusual there.

[bhouse]

There are all kinds of reasons why this could happen and all kinds of solutions. Some easy, some very, very complex. I'd be inclined to try 'easy' first.

 

If the PC has never been given a thorough spring clean (ie reformat hard drives and start again) it's probably finally got cluttered up with al sorts of garbage. 

 

If a reformat is not possible at this stage, then a program like AVG PC TuneUp can work wonders. I used it on on the the children's PCs and it became much faster to boot and to operate.

 

Good luck!

Brian

[Norman Verona]

Downloaded the AVG PC tune up but it tells me immediately that my trial period has expired and invites me to purchase.

 

Found something that looks similar from Glary which is freeware. We'll see what happens. 

[bhouse]

Norman,

 

Here's a different link to PC TuneUp offering a free one-time fix: http://www.avg.com/gb-en/email-upsell-acttrial?cmpid=em_act_is_all_acttrial

No guaranteed but it might bypass the 'trial expired' flag.

Brian

[Norman Verona]

Brian,

 

Still says the trial has expired. I must have downloaded the free version before.

 

I'll see how it goes with Glary. I don't mind buying it but would like to know it will be of benefit first.

[jim_l]

Is it just slow on internet use - or on starting and other apps?  

 

If it is just slow on internet - try to clear out all temp files etc.  Tools, Internet Options, 'Delete...' select all options and press 'Delete'

[Dodgey]

Install superantispyware and run it.

Do the same with malware bytes anti malware.

You may well have, you guessed it, malware.

Avg doesn't catch malware very well, if at all. Also, there is no good reason not to use the free version of avg.

[bhouse]

Also, there is no good reason not to use the free version of avg.

Technically, that's true. However, it's only free for non-commercial users as some of us commercial users pay the asking price thus funding the company's work.

Brian

[Rhett Turner - Black Country AO]

You may have just reached that point where its windows reinstall time, I use windows (and Mac) at home and windows at work and it's just excepted that every so often you just have to rebuild the os. We have never quite worked out exactly what it is but it just seems to be that way.

[DerekJ]

Hi Norm,

 

Is the disk full? (Simple things sometimes get overlooked)

 

I assume that you have run the Task Manager and sorted by CPU time. If that's clear, run the resource monitor and look at the disk activity. Hi disk activity can kill the computer just as well as a busy CPU.

 

Cheers

[Norman Verona]

So many questions.

 

It's not only internet items, it can take over a minute to open an email

 

The paid version of AVG deals with malware, the free doesn't.

 

This disk is nowhere near full and the disk doesn't seem to be thrashing.

 

I did the Glary clean up about lunchtime and rebooted about 15:00. It seems OK so far but I'll know by midnight.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try the spyware finders but am sure AVG looks after that.

 

Thanks again.

[Dodgey]

No one product deals with malware properly. You really do need to run other products to clean up. Everyone should at least have malware bytes installed and regularly updated. When you get some common malware it stops any further updates working.

[Rhett Turner - Black Country AO]

Norm,

 

How much RAM is there installed, my son's windows 7 Laptop was getting unusable but following some of the processes above made it better but it still needed a rebuild installing more RAM meant that the rebuild could be put off. 

 

Rhett