OT....laptop.... Task Manger & go slow

[Major Stare]

Laptop is getting slower to boot up when logging in and opening Internet Explorer/iTunes or other programs takes ages.

Internet Explorer - it can take me a couple of minutes just to open explorer and get on the WSCC forum.

Sometimes programs stop responding.

On my DeskTop manager, when nothing else is running i have in the region of 60 Processses (currently 63 with just task manager and this forum running).

Does this seems excessive at 60 Processes running? Is this slowing my laptop?

[sailing]

I sometime have this problems were the computer is running dead slow. Its as if something is running and taking up all the memory.  It seems to be running about 80 to 90 tasks but I am beggared if I know which  ones are causing the problem and if they really need to be running. It would be nice if there was a programme that tell you what's running in plain English and if it is really necessary at that point in time .

If anybody knows , let me know please

[Mike H]

60 isn't excessive.  It largely depends on what options you have enabled in Windows and what 'utilities' you may have installed - things like anti-virus, photo organisers, instant messengers, popup blockers, iTunes, printer managers etc etc.

When was the last time you cleared out your local porn, sorry I mean browsing history and cached we content ?

Do you use any of those stupid and pointless browser tool bars that the likes of Google get you to install?  Get rid of them.

Turn off desktop search if you have it enabled too.  It can slow you down while its indexing your drives.

You could also try something like CCleaner which is a free app that gets rid of all sorts of accumulated crud.

Mike

[ljsanders]

It may not necessarily be CPU usage thats the problem.

If your hard disc is whirling away like the clappers it could be what's known as "page swapping" that's the problem.

If you have insufficient memory to have all the applications you got running at the time, Windows (or whatever operating system you are using) stores the least frequently used memory to your hard disc for retrieval later. When that memory is then required by the application, windows restores it back to memory. However in order to make room it it has store something else back to the hard disc.

Half the time when a friend or family has said why is my computer going slow, this is the problem. Insufficient memory for the demands of the applications loaded. Put an extra gig or two of RAM in there and hey presto instant 200% performance boost.

If there doesn't appear to be any particular application that is hogging all the CPU, sort the list of applications by memory usage order and see whats the biggest.

[Andy Banks]

What OS you running?

You might try determining the ammount of physical RAM and manually setting the pagefile to minimum and maximum of double that.

[Guest]

When you look at the processes, do you have eabservr.exe running?  This is non essential and slows everything to a crawl.  Are you on an HP or Compaq?

If it is running, just end task and everything will speed up considerably.

[fatbaldbloke]

You could take a look at ErrorWiz.  It checks what's running at startup.  It made a lot of difference to my fairly low spec home laptop.  It's about 19 quid to download.  If you know your way around you can edit stuff in the start up settings and registry, but this bit of software makes it quite easy.  I now run ErrorWiz and do a virus scan (with PandaCloud) every week.  I've also disabled automatic uploads, and I've noticed a definite performance improvement.

[pistonbroke]

Try to get hold of  a programme called "End it All"

It allows you to end all background programmes by using a simple mouse click , makes it easy to see which prog is causing the problem  

[Stuart]

27 processes running on my desk top.  

Run services.msc and have a look at sites like this and you should be able to identify the non-essentials.  

Download ccleaner and this allows you to easily edit start up programs - only two on mine; my firewall and anti-virus