# Slow laptop



## watcher (Sep 4, 2006)

I was given a laptop and I think the main reason is its slow, slow, SLOW.

It is a HP Presario with an AMD Sempron 2.1 ghz processor, Has 3 GB of ram and running Win 7 home premium.

It takes forever to boot and to load programs and sometimes just to do actions in programs. It will bog down to the point I have to wait for the screen to catch up with my typing and I only type at about 40 WPM.

I have deleted a lot of programs and tried to clean up what loads on boot to the minimum but it still is a turtle.

Other than reinstalling windows to clean it completely or adding RAM is there anything I can do to speed things up?


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## arabian knight (Dec 19, 2005)

How old is it? One reason maybe the HD is failing. My old Dell was like 5 minutes slow to load even XP.


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## backwoodsman7 (Mar 22, 2007)

3GB is plenty of memory, and the hard drive is not failing. (At least, it's not causing the slowness.) It's all choked up with malware; clean that off, and it'll work fine.

But since it's new to you anyway, it would be a really good time to reinstall Windows, and give it a fresh start. (I assume it has a recovery partition from which you can do that?) That way you get rid of the malware, and whatever else the previous owner may have done to it.


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## watcher (Sep 4, 2006)

I'll ck it for malware and see what happens. I should also see about cleaning up the registry.

I don't want to reinstall if I can keep from it because right now it has Word on it and I don't have a copy of that to install. Its the only laptop I have with Word on it, it came with our desktop and my boss wants things as Word docs.


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## backwoodsman7 (Mar 22, 2007)

watcher said:


> I don't want to reinstall if I can keep from it because right now it has Word on it and I don't have a copy of that to install. Its the only laptop I have with Word on it, it came with our desktop and my boss wants things as Word docs.


That's most likely fine; most virus problems are easily cleaned up with no lasting ill effects. Of course, there are occasional exceptions.

Or, you could just use LibreOffice or Abiword. You certainly don't need to use Word to get Word files.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

watcher said:


> I have deleted a lot of programs and tried to clean up what loads on boot to the minimum but it still is a turtle.
> 
> Other than reinstalling windows to clean it completely or adding RAM is there anything I can do to speed things up?


Deleting applications from your hard drive isn't going to help. 3 GB of memory should be enough for Windows 7 under normal use. But you might keep an eye on your resources to find out what's going on.

To do that, right-click on the task bar (at the bottom of your screen) in an area with no icons. Select 'Start Task Manager'. Click the Performance tab. You will see CPU & memory usage there. You can run the task manager in the background and look at it from time to time to monitor resources.

There's a good chance your problem is heat. That can be caused either by a cooling fan not turning or having a heatsink clogged with dust. Both are common for laptops over 5 years old. If your CPU usage is pegged at 100% in your task manager then you're almost certainly dealing with a heat problem. You'll need to open the case to fix it. 9 times out of 10 it's just a heatsink clogged with dust.


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## backwoodsman7 (Mar 22, 2007)

Nevada said:


> There's a good chance your problem is heat. That can be caused either by a cooling fan not turning or having a heatsink clogged with dust. Both are common for laptops over 5 years old. If your CPU usage is pegged at 100% in your task manager then you're almost certainly dealing with a heat problem. You'll need to open the case to fix it.


With all due respect, this is completely incorrect. Clogged heatsinks and cooling fans can be a major problem, especially in laptops, but overheating doesn't make a machine slow down. An overheating machine will usually run perfectly, at full speed, right up to the millisecond it shuts itself down or locks up.


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## Harry Chickpea (Dec 19, 2008)

backwoodsman7 said:


> With all due respect, this is completely incorrect. Clogged heatsinks and cooling fans can be a major problem, especially in laptops, but overheating doesn't make a machine slow down. An overheating machine will usually run perfectly, at full speed, right up to the millisecond it shuts itself down or locks up.



Nope. Speaking from YEARS of experience, overheating WILL impact processing speed. The simple explanation is that a processor does thousands of calculations a second. When it overheats, it throws errors. Error handlers within the processor correct most of those, but they take time and add to the heat. Many units will intentionally slow to protect the processor if it overheats. If processors (and programs) DIDN'T have error correction your bank account might commonly come up as $42.ED0C or some other nonsense.

At least a third of the challenges I had in writing one major program was in anticipating errors and adding error handlers.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

backwoodsman7 said:


> With all due respect, this is completely incorrect. Clogged heatsinks and cooling fans can be a major problem, especially in laptops, but overheating doesn't make a machine slow down. An overheating machine will usually run perfectly, at full speed, right up to the millisecond it shuts itself down or locks up.


Sorry to disagree, but my experience has been that an overheated processor will run slow, throw errors (blue screens & kernel panics), and in extreme cases cause the machine to shut down. The saving grace to heat problems is that after the processor has had an opportunity to cool they usually run fine. Processor chips are pretty resilient and normally aren't damaged from overheating.

When I renovate a laptop the first thing I do is open it up and clean the heatsink, then replace the CMOS battery. In 5 year-old computers the heatsink is always clogged with dust -- no exceptions. The #1 reason I'm able to get used laptops for $50 is because the heatsink is clogged and the system runs slowly. It's usually the biggest problem the laptop has, and it costs me nothing to fix.

There are references on the Internet that say heat slows a computer down, but they're hardly authoritative. Still, it doesn't hurt to provide a link.

_Excessive heat can cause a significant decrease in computer performance because most processors automatically reduce the speed of the processor to help compensate for heat related issues._
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000179.htm

I have a couple of heat-related anecdotes I could share, but I won't bore you. LOL


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## backwoodsman7 (Mar 22, 2007)

Harry Chickpea said:


> At least a third of the challenges I had in writing one major program was in anticipating errors and adding error handlers.


Let's keep the thread relevant to the problem at hand. In that context, my statements are correct.



Nevada said:


> _Excessive heat can cause a significant decrease in computer performance because most processors automatically reduce the speed of the processor to help compensate for heat related issues._
> http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000179.htm


He said it boots slowly. That's not consistent with a heat problem, but it is consistent with a malware problem.

I've seen lots of overheating laptops too, and I've never seen one where it caused a slowdown that's noticeable to the average user.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

backwoodsman7 said:


> He said it boots slowly. That's not consistent with a heat problem, but it is consistent with a malware problem.


I saw that. He could have been trying to reboot without first letting the processor cool, which would have been a slow boot.


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## backwoodsman7 (Mar 22, 2007)

Nevada said:


> I saw that. He could have been trying to reboot without first letting the processor cool, which would have been a slow boot.


OK, fine. But the harsh reality is, a malware problem is very likely, and a heat problem that severe is very unlikely. A severe heat problem will also be really obvious because the fan will be screaming at maximum speed, which he didn't mention.

But why don't we ask him? Watcher, is the fan running at max speed all the time, or is it working normally? If so, I wouldn't run the computer more than a few minutes at a time until that's taken care of. If not, clean the fan & heatsink anyway, which should be done regularly on a laptop; sooner rather than later is good, but no rush because it's not the cause of your current problem.


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## watcher (Sep 4, 2006)

Or maybe its both. I ran malwarebytes and it found a lot of thing. I'm going to run spybot on it later and when I get a chance I'll crack the case and give it a cleaning.


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## Fiend (Jun 27, 2015)

Start the task manager, go to the performance tab and click on the resource monitor.

You can use the resource monitor to see which programs, processes, or services are using the most CPU, Memory and bandwidth. From there you can isolate what you want to shut down, stop or uninstall. If something is hogging resources you will see it there.

"Speccy" is a decent utility to get a run down of all your hardware if you want to update drivers or to see whats going on. It displays the temps for the computer as well.


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## watcher (Sep 4, 2006)

Its the heat. Now I have to bet brave enough to open it up and clean out the heat sink. From what I've seen online you have to take the think almost completely apart to get to it.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

watcher said:


> Its the heat. Now I have to bet brave enough to open it up and clean out the heat sink. From what I've seen online you have to take the think almost completely apart to get to it.


Not always. Some laptop models are easy to reach the heatsink. What is the model number of your HP Presario?


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## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

watcher said:


> I was given a laptop and I think the main reason is its slow, slow, SLOW.
> 
> It is a *HP Presario with an AMD Sempron 2.1 ghz processor, Has 3 GB of ram* and running Win 7 home premium.


I found your problem. LOL

Seriously though....the Semprons are AMD's version of the Celeron, which aren't the fastest. I'm guessing it's probably 32-bit, which means that it couldn't address 3Gb of RAM even if it wanted to.

If it were mine (if you can afford it), unless you want a completely new laptop, I'd buy an SSD (solid state drive) to replace the hard drive in it. More memory either won't make a huge difference, or won't even help if you have a 32-bit OS, but an SSD will make a BIG speed difference.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Kung said:


> If it were mine (if you can afford it), unless you want a completely new laptop, I'd buy an SSD (solid state drive) to replace the hard drive in it. More memory either won't make a huge difference, or won't even help if you have a 32-bit OS, but an SSD will make a BIG speed difference.


Interestingly, I've read that the 3GB limitation is in mainboard design, not Windows. But even if you install 4GB or more memory in a laptop with 32-but Windows it will still only address 3GB, unless you go to 64-bit Windows.

I'm completely sold on SSD drives. I'm booting Windows 7 in 20 seconds and opening MS Word in 4 seconds. I don't believe there's anything that can be done today to boost performance more than installing SSD. I'm getting a disk performance score of 7.8 (out of 8) in the Windows Expreience Index.










I've been renovating laptops this summer. I'm making Intel Core 2 Duo machines really scream with SSDs. Trust me, with a SSD you don't need an i7 processor to have a great running laptop for general use.

I'll be interested to see how these laptops run with Windows 10.


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## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

Nevada said:


> Interestingly, I've read that the 3GB limitation is in mainboard design, not Windows. But even if you install 4GB or more memory in a laptop with 32-but Windows it will still only address 3GB, unless you go to 64-bit Windows.


Well, I know that there are some mainboards that support everything *but* one thing that prevents x64 utilization; but every laptop I've seen where I work (HP EliteBook 85xx series, HP ProBooks, Dell Latitude/Precision, etc.) has worked great with x32 and FAR better and faster with x64.



> I've been renovating laptops this summer. I'm making Intel Core 2 Duo machines really scream with SSDs. Trust me, with a SSD you don't need an i7 processor to have a great running laptop for general use.
> 
> I'll be interested to see how these laptops run with Windows 10.


Oh yeah. I've got a 2nd Gen i5, 2.0GHz for my own personal laptop, with 8Gb. Not the fastest but OMG is it fast with an SSD - boot times of 8 to 10 seconds for Win 10.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Kung said:


> Well, I know that there are some mainboards that support everything *but* one thing that prevents x64 utilization; but every laptop I've seen where I work (HP EliteBook 85xx series, HP ProBooks, Dell Latitude/Precision, etc.) has worked great with x32 and FAR better and faster with x64.


There's a Wikipedia page on the topic of the 3GB barrier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_GB_barrier

Pretty much moot now. We're in a 64-bit world.


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## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

Well, yeah; I knew there was 'more to it' than just the hardware limitation, but it essentially boils down to the same thing - e.g., if using >4Gb of RAM causes some RAM addresses to be utilized by other devices on the PCI/AGP bus, meh, same thing as a 'hardware limitation' to me. Simplified I know, but you're right - there were several components. Pretty much every computer nowadays will run x64.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Kung said:


> Well, yeah; I knew there was 'more to it' than just the hardware limitation, but it essentially boils down to the same thing - e.g., if using >4Gb of RAM causes some RAM addresses to be utilized by other devices on the PCI/AGP bus, meh, same thing as a 'hardware limitation' to me. Simplified I know, but you're right - there were several components. Pretty much every computer nowadays will run x64.


Actually we haven't talked much about 32-bit vs 64-bit here, but it's a topic that hits me pretty hard. I don't object to the idea of 64-bit, but it has problems.

To illustrate that, Photoshop 64-bit installs two complete and discrete applications by default, both the 32 & 64 bit versions. The reason is that some protocols don't play well with 64-bit applications. For example, the TWAIN protocol typically used by scanners only works with Photoshop 32-bit. To be fully compatible with 64-bit the scanner manufacturers will need to come up with something else. I'm sure they will, but it shows that we're not 100% ready for 64-bit right now.

But where it hits me the hardest is in data centers. You probably have your servers staged locally, but I lease server resources in data centers (I'm in the Dupont Fabros data center in Elk Grove Village, IL). The thing is that 64-bit operating systems have a larger memory footprint than 32-bit operating systems, and dedicated memory is the most costly of server resources. Since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is only being released in 64-bit, that pretty much spells the end of 32-bit servers. That means my server resource leasing costs will go up when I eventually to go to 64-bit.

I'm staying with 32-bit servers for the time being, but the handwriting is on the wall.

I use Windows 7 64-bit in my workstation and am happy with it.


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## arabian knight (Dec 19, 2005)

My 6 year iMac is 64 bit as it is running a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor.
I just check a chart and it is 64 bit, with it using that processor.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

arabian knight said:


> My 6 year iMac is 64 bit as it is running a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor.
> I just check a chart and it is 64 bit, with it using that processor.


Sure, Intel Core 2 Duo supports 64-bit operating systems. I'm using a 2.8 Dore 2 Duo in my home laptop right now. It's running Windows 7 64-bit.


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## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

Nevada said:


> To illustrate that, Photoshop 64-bit installs two complete and discrete applications by default, both the 32 & 64 bit versions. The reason is that some protocols don't play well with 64-bit applications. For example, the TWAIN protocol typically used by scanners only works with Photoshop 32-bit. To be fully compatible with 64-bit the scanner manufacturers will need to come up with something else. I'm sure they will, but it shows that we're not 100% ready for 64-bit right now.


I can see your point, but to me, the issue isn't 64-bit; it's the outdated protocol. F'rinstance, I'm in the midst of having to design a bunch of workarounds at work because the websites that thousands of people have to use aren't compatible with IE 11.0.

Normally I'd agree with the sites complaining (they're almost all DoD or Army sites) but they've been seeing this coming for literally years - as in, 7 or 8 years. If you can't upgrade your site to work with IE 11 but the issue is actually that you haven't yet designed the site to work with TLS 1.2 vs TLS 1.0 given a half DECADE or more of warning...something's wrong, and it's not 'that darn IE 11.'


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## arabian knight (Dec 19, 2005)

Whats going to happen then when MS drops IE? 10 has a new browser, but IE is still there. But it will be gone in the near future I am sure.


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## watcher (Sep 4, 2006)

Nevada said:


> Not always. Some laptop models are easy to reach the heatsink. What is the model number of your HP Presario?


CQ61. I got the son-in-law to do it for me. I watched a couple of videos and watched him. The way it was set up he had to pull the monitor off and even take the motherboard out to get to it. It also seemed to have only one fan. Seems a crazy design to me but I guess the thinking is by the time it gets dirty enough to need cleaning it will be outdated and replaced.


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## watcher (Sep 4, 2006)

Kung said:


> I found your problem. LOL
> 
> Seriously though....the Semprons are AMD's version of the Celeron, which aren't the fastest. I'm guessing it's probably 32-bit, which means that it couldn't address 3Gb of RAM even if it wanted to.
> 
> If it were mine (if you can afford it), unless you want a completely new laptop, I'd buy an SSD (solid state drive) to replace the hard drive in it. More memory either won't make a huge difference, or won't even help if you have a 32-bit OS, but an SSD will make a BIG speed difference.


Just bought the wife a new laptop and I have an even older dell laptop I use mostly. I want to breath some new life into this one for a couple of reasons. One it has a bigger display than my current dell and it has MS Word on it plus the wireless on my dell died. Since its mostly a back up for a back up I'm not looking to put much if any money into it.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

watcher said:


> Seems a crazy design to me but I guess the thinking is by the time it gets dirty enough to need cleaning it will be outdated and replaced.


That's true. It's not the kind of thing you need to do on a regular basis. It usually takes 3 or 4 years to accumulate a significant dust covering.

Now you know why data center server rooms use HEPA filtered air. They host thousands of servers and don't want dust bunny problems. Servers can sit in commercial server rooms for years and never show signs of dust.


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