Laptop Sudden Slow Down

Hello! Can anyone please help me with this problem? My laptop started going slow. What I mean by going slow is that the start up takes 30 minutes. When it starts everything is so slow. Like when I open the start menu, it takes forever. But before my last other open, it was doing fine.

By the way, after my last usage, I traveled from one place to another. I just put in my laptop at my bag without any sleeves. Could this be the cause of it? Also, my laptop isn't making any funny noise.

My laptop has still 100+GB as well.

Can anyone please help me?

 

Sorry. My laptop only has 10G+.

 

There can be many causes of slowdowns - how is CPU use looking? Could be RAM giving trouble (have you tested it?), power failing, viruses, etc, etc.

I'm particularly responding to your post because I have recently seen two slowdowns caused by a failing hard drive. So my first suggestion would be to make sure you have a backup of anything you want to keep on another medium, just in case. Then start trouble shooting.

I can't see why travelling as described would cause any particular problem, unless you gave it a good bump or something.

 

CPU? Or hard drive? If about hard drive, there are no funny sounds. For the RAM before I'm having problem with it when I'm in the middle of my editing, it always says "Your system is running low on virtual memory." Then I shut it down again and use it again same day. It was just working fine until my next reboot. Where it all slow down.

 

You have only a 10G hard drive? How full is it? How much RAM do you have? What is the operating system? Recent downloads? Computer make? More details are needed before and meaningful advice can be given.:wave:wave:wave

 

I think he means he has 10GB unused storage.
It would be easier if you provided the information asked for by brandypeppy.
In the meantime, since you mention problems with your virtual memory, you could try increasing it as a first option. If you have Windows 7, do the following:

1. On the Start menu, click Control Panel, then click System.
2. In the left pane, click Advanced system settings. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
3. On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.
4. Click the Advanced tab, and then, under Virtual memory, click Change.
5. Check if the Automatically manage paging file size for all drives check box is checked. if it is not, try checking that box and see if it helps. If it is already checked, clear it and continue below.
6. Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file you want to change.
7. If System Managed Size is not checked, check it and try that. If it is checked, continue below.
8. Click Custom size, type a new size in the Initial size (MB) and Maximum size (MB) box, click Set, and then click OK. Try making these sizes the same as the size of your RAM if you have more than 2 GB of RAM. Otherwise, try 1.5 times your RAM.

If you have Windows XP... go here:
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=129378
and look at the top two posts.

Then see what Halo says in this thread:
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=89853

It would also be useful to look at this post to see what is using your virtual memory:
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_can_i_fix_too_little_virtual_memory_in_windows.html

 

Here are the infos.:

Compaq Presario B1200
Windows Vista SP2
11.7GB free of 141GB
Intel(R) Core(TM) Duo CPU
Memory 1GB

 

1G is barely enough with Vista, will depend an awful lot on what you are using for security as well as your autorun list, which I am guessing is quite long, based on the load on your HD.

I don't know what sleeves in your bag means.

Wow, your biggest issue is 11G free on a 140G HD! Anything over 85%, you can no longer defrag, and 85% is considered the top limit, you're at 92% full!

You need to; 1) Get a larger HD or clean the heck out of the one you have, a fresh format and install would be best, 2) Get more RAM, at least another G.

You can find help here for the second part of item one if you need it. And do the steps GC gave you.

Best luck!!:wave:wave

 

This

can also be part of the problem. Once the free space on a computer drops below 10% it can start to act weird. 10% of your hard drive would be 14.1GB; you have less than that remaining.

 

Here's my advice.

1. Buy an external HD and offload all that crap onto it. Then delete those files from your computer.
2. Defrag your drive using one of the utilities listed on this site like Defraggler or something of that nature.
3. Run check disk, which you can access by opening up Computer, then right click on your drive and hit properties, then the tools tab and Error Checking. check both boxes and restart the computer.

If you are still slow, buy some RAM and if that doesn't work, start scanning for Spyware.

 

I've purchased an external drive already transferring most of the files right now. I'll try everything you've all said and report back again.

 

If I have 1GB what should I put in the Initial Size and Maximum Size?

 

There are differing views on this, but I believe 1.5 GB (1500 MB) for each would do.

 

I've put 1.5GB for each. Now it works fine again. Thanks!

 

Excellent.

You might consider some of the other suggestions in this thread as well - delete stuff off your hard drive (maybe you have done that already), defragment the hard drive, and increase your RAM. If you increase your RAM to 2 GB, you should increase your initial and maximum virtual memory to 2 GB as well.

You should also think about running CCleaner (from http://www.majorgeeks.com/CCleaner_Standard_d5125.html) before you defrag. That will get rid of any unwanted temporary stuff, etc:

• Download and install CCleaner
  • Run Ccleaner with the default options (that means don’t change anything) to clean out temporary files.
  • Only use the default settings on the Windows Tab and select Run Cleaner. Do not run any other options from other tabs.
  • Also it is highly recommended to login to all other User Accounts on the PC.
    • Run CCleaner on each account. This can greatly reduce scan time and log sizes from the later scanning you will do below.
    • If you don’t see Ccleaner’s link when logging into the other accounts, just go to the C:\Program Files\Ccleaner folder and double click on the ccleaner.exe file to run it. You can also create a shortcut to the file on the Desktop of your other user accounts to make it easier to run in the future.
  The above is from http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407

You might consider going through the whole process at that link to give your machine a good clean up, if you think there's any chance that you have some malware..

 

Excellent point on CCCleaner, but please make sure if you use this product that when it prompts you to make a backup of your registry, that you do it. Be cautious and make sure you aren't deleting some critical program registry entry or sometimes programs stop working. Overall it's a good tool, but just following up. :cool