Hardware issue?

Hi.

Not sure if this is a hardware issue really, or whether it's a software/driver problem.

My friend has asked me to look at his Fujitsu Siemens laptop because it's sloweed doen massively. It used to run flight sim perfectly, but now it freezes up all the time. Opening browser windows takes several seconds where the response used to be instantaneous.

I'm thinking most of this is probably down to fragmentation of the hard drives and generally being clogged up. I will run a defrag and scan for all the usual stuff and install a decent firewall and antivirus.

However another issue is that the "standby" button on the shutdown menu is greyed out. I've never come across this before and was wondering if anyone had any idea what might be the cause of this? I've not got the laptop here, I will put up full tech spec when I get my hands on it, was just looking for general advice about this problem, whether it's hardware related or whether it's just Windows throwing one of its usual hissy fits!

Many thanks

Scoobs

 

For the performance issue, I recommend you follow the steps in this post to see if it can be helped. If the machine is still painfully slow after this, then it likely has a hardware problem. Post back, and we will help you diagnose it.

As for standby, I recommend you read this Microsoft KB titled How to troubleshoot hibernation and standby issues in Windows XP, and see if it helps.