Cleaning up a sluggish laptop...

[Disco]

Hey guys, I've had a Toshiba Satellite (~$2300 when purchased) for the last two years: being used for uni assignments, watching dvd's, occasional trolling, collating music and pictures. Its running XP, but is vista compatable, so it is one of the later generations of XP.

There's stil a stack of memory availiable, and have run things like the defragmenter over it every now and again, but it has over time been getting slower, and proceeding with more error message and encountered problem screens.

What does Rotorburn's computer buffs do/ reccomend doing/ reccomend running to get and keep their computer's up to scratch? Regular maintainence protocol?

Uni resumes at the end of Feb, and I dont want any crashes this year to make me pull my hair out during late night assignments.

Any help appreciated guys!

 

[MasterOfReality]

I had the same problem, also with a 2 year old Toshiba Satellite, but with Vista. My laptop went exponentially downhill when I installed Itunes. Waiting for the damn thing to boot up took ages, a couple of minutes at least.

I did the defrag thing several times but it did fark all so I got fed up with it about 3 weeks ago.

Did you create recovery discs after you turned the laptop on for the first time?

I used my recovery disks which removes the partition and recreates it (I think), and basically its like going through the initial install process when you turn on the laptop for the very first time..

So, after it had unpacked and installed itself, all I did was install Office and it was like a brand new machine.

 

[willsy01]

Wipe and rebuild every 12months at a minimum. It doesn't matter how orderly you are with everything, Windows will start slowing down after 6 months.

Another habit to get into is partitioning off the hard disk so you've got a 20 or 30gig C drive and use the rest for storing misc data. Makes rebuilding easier as well as you don't have to back everything up first.

That being said, back everything up anyway!

 

[Alec McJo]

If you wanna make it like brand new, buy a new hard drive and new memory... backup only what you need, re install OS + needed programs and put what you backed up back on...

 

[tangcla]

Format and reinstall Windows.

 

[Jon]

Basic stuff I know but delete all your temp internet files and cookies, then download Antimalware at malware.org.
Run the free version of this + AVG (download off the web), also spybot search and destroy.
These three together will replace and fix any virus/Trojan/spyware related issues that are causing your processor to work harder.

Totally free except for download allowance and you can fark off your current virus software which is obviously not working very well.

 

[Regan of Gong]

Last time I played with a Windows laptop, I found registry cleanup tools to be a lifesaver, though it's disputed as to their actual benefit.

 

[Spike-X]

If you're up for something new, you could give a Linux-based OS such as Ubuntu a try. It sounds like there's nothing you do with your comp that the pre-installed software couldn't manage quite nicely.

 

[TMLS1]

whenever a friend or family member gets a new laptop I always through the run function, type msconfig. Google will have more details on how to do in Vista.

Then go through and tick all the cr@p you don't want booting up and running in the background. If you know a enough about computers you should be able to see the different programs like iTunes etc that will run only when you open them.

And remove all the brand specific crap they load on via uninstall seems to speed things up for me. All the HP cr@p that comes with their machines these days just seems to bring the machine to a crawl.

 

[._._._._._.]

If you're up for something new, you could give a Linux-based OS such as Ubuntu a try. It sounds like there's nothing you do with your comp that the pre-installed software couldn't manage quite nicely.

Yes, but I'd suggest going with Mint instead of Ubuntu. Ubuntu doesn't come with codecs to play MP3's and little things like that, but Mint comes with all the media things pre-installed.

Also, you don't need to defrag linux. Ever. And it's free.

 

[24alpha]

Format and reinstall Windows.

This is the ONLY thing to do. Stop wasting time and just do it. I'd suggest pre downloading all the current drivers to make your precess easier. And don't go to Vista. Get yourself Win7, it's heaps faster than both XP & Vista.

The bill is in the mail.......

 

[cam-o]

Linux is a valid option and I run Ubuntu on one of my lappies and it runs great. Trouble is if you're not a Linux dude it can be a pain in the backside to learn and may distract you from your studies for a while.
Another option - Windows 7. I recently rebuilt an XP lappy onto 7 and it's significantly faster.
If you have the grunt to run it I've been really impressed with 7 (And I was founder and CEO of the Vista haters club)

 

[tangcla]

This is the ONLY thing to do. Stop wasting time and just do it. I'd suggest pre downloading all the current drivers to make your precess easier. And don't go to Vista. Get yourself Win7, it's heaps faster than both XP & Vista.

The bill is in the mail.......

Hey! Invoices are paid on a first-come first-served basis... mine was first

 

[Pebble]

Same story with our old Toshiba laptop, it just got really slow. Aside from the fact it's windows and unavoidable, something else to consider is where your air intake is, I know with the old Toshi it was underneath, and we lived in a hell dusty place so the computer kind of died every 3 months and had to be sent for a clean out and a new fan (obviously got clogged up with dust and started overheating).
Hubbys new Toshiba (well new being a couple of years old) doesn't have the dust problem but has started not running efficiently. I agree that cleaning it up totally back to stock helps, but what a hassle, and all those windows updates that want to re-install themselves!!!

Me, I personally have been using a Mac desktop computer for the last few years, and no such problems, but I don't run windows on it either, not exactly sure how that would work and if I'd need antivirus etc so that's why Hubby sticks with his Windows based laptops for the spreadsheets and stuff he does.

I have heard that the new windows has a lot of similarities to features that come on a mac, so no wonder it's good (cheeky grin )

 

[tangcla]

I have heard that the new windows has a lot of similarities to features that come on a mac, so no wonder it's good (cheeky grin )

OSX 10.6 is an evolution; Windows 7 is a revolution.

 

[hifiandmtb]

Same story with our old Toshiba laptop, it just got really slow. Aside from the fact it's windows and unavoidable, something else to consider is where your air intake is, I know with the old Toshi it was underneath, and we lived in a hell dusty place so the computer kind of died every 3 months and had to be sent for a clean out and a new fan (obviously got clogged up with dust and started overheating).

+1. Our Satellite P30 is running MUCH better now the heat sinks were cleaned up. It took me about 30 mins & wasn't difficult at all.

http://www.irisvista.com/tech/laptops/ToshibaP35/SatelliteP35_fix_overheating_1.htm

 

[donthucktoflat]

worth investing in a can of air to clean up every now and then? whats the price on that anyway?

 

[Disco]

wow... cheers for all the informative replies.

Sounds like I'll be best to clean out the fans and heat sinks (have given them a minor clean every now and again), and just clean it up back to stock.

However, I'm liking the idea of rebooting it with Windows 7... So if my laptop is XP with Vista compatable, Windows 7 will run more efficiently? Any thaughts on this?