slow computer, what next?

Hi,

I am trying to fix MIL's computer, which she bought used and has always been "please just shoot me and put me out of my misery" slow. I know more about keeping a computer clean of viruses and spyware and performing general maintenance than the average Joe, but I know just enough to make me dangerous. I'm out of ideas.

It is so slow on the internet (AOL dial-up, but much worse than it should be), especially (unfortunately) at this site, but it is also slow to get around on when not on the internet. Another thing I've never seen is that double-clicking on the desktop does not work. You have to right click and then click on open to get it to do anything. I changed it to a single click, and that way things will open, but we like it better the other way, and maybe that is a clue of what's wrong. Also, it completely locks up or hangs on shutdown, so most of the time it cannot be shut down properly.

I have tried to use free diagnostic programs from this site, but anything that needs to be unzipped, no can do. I tried to download a zip program, but it took so long it timed out so that was a waste. I have run AVG, spybot, adaware, scandisk, defrag, and easycleaner, to no avail.

Belarc says: Gateway W98SE 433 MHz Celeron processor with 32 kilobyte primary memory cache, 128 kilobyte secondary memory cache.

At this point, I'm thinking that the Eraser program might be the simplest way to get rid of problem, but I don't know exactly what it will do or if it will help with this. If it would put everything back to how it came out of the factory, that would be acceptable. Can anyone clarify this for me?

Or would runing hijack this and posting a log be the best place to start?

Thanks,
Jen1

 

As to the mouse problem, has the speed for double-clicking been set too fast?
I believe that in the Control Panel, you can alter how your mouse works, and double-click speed is one of them. Maybe the slider is too far to the fast end, thus the computer is not registering it as a double click, but two consecutive single clicks.

 

The clicking problem is solved!!! Gosh that was easy. Hope the rest can be that simple. Thanks so much for your time and assistance.

 

Glad to help... Good luck with the rest of it.
Have you tried deleting your temporary internet files?

 

Defrag as well. Use the Disk Cleanup also.

 

I would be looking at what is loading at startup. Too many background programs may well be the root cause of your problems. From memory, my daughter was on AOL until she changed and they had loaded a whole heap of crap on her grey box until dear old dad pointed her towards stopping a lot of startup crap. Some of it was mighty suspicious and smacked of big brother watching!
HTH
Robert

 

What Operating System u running Robert???

 

I already had removed everything from startup that AOL did not require to run/get online. But it didn't help. So yesterday afternoon, I set up a new account with a different ISP and removed EVERYTHING I could find related to AOL. Then I ran all the maintenance programs again. I really think it's better (although I have thought that before, maybe it's for real this time). I'm gonna test it today and see what happens. Thanks for your help.

 

I had done everything that has been suggested here so far. It seems that between solving the double-clicking problem and banishing all things AOL, it's much better. I've been working on this thing for weeks, and I suspected AOL from the start, but I thought that if AOL did this to everyone's computer, they wouldn't last five minutes. So I talked myself out of it until I just couldn't think of anything else to do. But that seems to have been the kicker. So as far as I can tell thus far, it seems to be much better. If not, I'll be back. Thanks All.