deathly slow

[Mass]

Hey all.

For the past few days ive been trying to work out why my laptop has become so desperately slow in recent months. Ive barely got more than 80gb on a 250gb hard drive, Ive defragged it. But beyond the basics I dont know what else I can do to help it. Its only a year old and frustratingly passed its warranty last month while I was away!

Any tips or help would be hugely appreciated.

Danny

[ozzy72]

Download a program called CCleaner and run it. That should clear off a lot of junk, then do a disk cleanup followed by another defrag and see what happens

[Groundbound1]

Spyware? Virus? Too much heat? All can slow things down like crazy.

[Mass]

I shall give that program a go and see what happens.

In reply to Groundbound1 though, come to think about it, the laptop gets incredibly hot in a very short space of time. Thats even when its on a solid surface. I cant have it on my lap because it gets too hot and burns! Should I have a look inside the bottom and see if something is clogging the fan maybe?

[Groundbound1]

I would say it would be a good idea, but only if you really know what you're doing. What model laptop is it?

[Mass]

Well thats the thing, im better than a lot of people, but I wouldnt really know what i was doing no. I would be hoping for something obvious, stopping the fan or stopping the cooling system from working in one way or another. Specs are as follows.

Hewlett-Packard
Compaq Presario CQ60
AMD Turion Dual-Core RM-72, 2.10GHZ
4GB RAM
32 Bit OS

[Groundbound1]

Might be worth having a pro look at it. Can you hear the fans speeding up or slowing down?

[Mass]

When I start it up it works pretty much as usual. With exception of the speed. Which to be fair is not that bad initially. However after a few minutes when it starts getting hot, as usual, the fan will speed up. This increased fan speed never seems to do the job though as it just get hotter and therefore the fan never slows down again. Its shortly after the fan speeds up that the speed of the computer goes from slow to really slow though.

[Groundbound1]

That's what it sounds like to me. (heat that is)

[UnkieDude]

DO NOT TAKE THE LAPTOP APART!

Unless...I say UNLESS...something is not working properly, the insane heat issues are a result of the nuclear reactor that most laptops now have for a CPU.  They just plain generate some intense heat.

Go and get a lap pad made to dissipate the heat away from the machine.  Some have fans built into them.  You can get a desktop model or a lap version.   Or both.

The Evil Unkie has spoken.

[DarkOdius]

[quote]Go and get a lap pad made to dissipate the heat away from the machine.