Dead Slow Laptop

[masmith]

Hi All,

My sister has a Dell she uses for her school work etc, its about 18 months old and it is so slow

It is not filed up

Ive checked there is no viruses

Ive done all the windows System Tools things

What should I do? :-/

Would a system restore help?

Please help

[ozzy72]

Have you cleaned the registry with a decent registry cleaner? Also have you checked the processes running in the background?

[masmith]

Ive checked the processes in the background...Nothing seems wrong e.g. taking up alot of power...

But I'm a bit unsure about using a registry cleaner as what does it do because last time I used one it removed programs from my uninstalling list and a host of all other stuff...

[ozzy72]

Doctor Mark says it might be worth visiting www.AskWoody.com for some handy hints and tips

[ctjoyce]

Before we start, what are its system specs? Just because I want to know.

Step 1: Open up her Task manager and click performance tab. When the system is just sitting there doing nothing what is its processor load? Anything over 25% when its idleing is a problem.

Step 2: Run O&O Defrag. Just use the trial, and run a SPACE defrag. This is a much more powerful tool than the standard windows one, and will actually do the job right.

Step 3: Run a chkdisk. When you do it, tell it to attempt to fix file errors and attempt to fix bad drive sectors.

Step 4: Make sure all the latest updates are installed, update all her drivers, update her BIOS as well.

Step 5: Now run a registry cleaner.

Finally if the laptop is still slow its most likely time for a reformat, or buy some new hardware. A reformat is always the better option to a restore.

Cheers
Cameron