Computer is "slowing" down

[Stability]

Hey all. My computer is progressively getting slower. The odd part is that when I'm doing stuff like playing WoW, browsing the internet, etc. it's still working really well. The part that is "slow" is booting up and opening programs. I kid you not when I say it takes 20+ seconds to open Firefox. However, as soon as it's open, I'm browsing just fine. Same thing with WoW. Takes a little while to get to the load in screen, but once I'm in, I'm good to go. Any ideas????

For those that might suggest a virus and/or spyware, I have Comcast, so I use the free version of McAfee that comes with it. Is this a good call for home use or would I be better of to switch to something else?

-Stab

[[Jett]-Razorflight]

If you find an answer I would love to know what you found out. My computer does the same thing. I completely wiped my hard drive and reinstalled everything but does not help. This leads me to think its either my ram or CPU. I am just too busy to fart around with the inside of my laptop.

[[Jett]-Willow]

How about a simple hard drive defragmentation in Safe Mode? I'm 99.99999999998% sure if you run a few defragmentations in Safe Mode and clean your registry, this would end. Also use, Defraggler (http://www.defraggler.com/) to defrag, not shitty built in window's business. From there clean your registry of null entries and unreferenced stuff. Use CCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/download) to clean registry and do a general disk cleanup.

If that doesn't help it could be Hard Disk age/life or it could be malware, BUT Mcaffe should keep ya pretty clean and you use Firefox, so your malware should be pretty minimal, probably non existent from the web.

[Stability]

Hey thanks Willow. Appreciate the tips. What is the difference in running defrag in safe mode??? Never heard of that strat, but I'll take your word for it working :)

To Razor - I'll try and run this tonight and let you know what I come up with.

-Stab

[Stability]

Found the answer to my question above. Thanks again for tip Willow. Will let you know if this solves the problem.

-Stab

[[Jett]-Willow]

Just in case others wonder. Running Defragmentation in safe mode allows you to defragment files that would normally be used by your Windows OS in normal operation. When in safe mode these files are not constantly loaded/accessed, thus allowing you to defragment them efficiently.

[[Jett]-Dsru]

also, a cool tool to run every once in awhile is CC Cleaner.Do a google and you will find it.

[[Jett]-XgrinderX]

-Willow;9686']From there clean your registry of null entries and unreferenced stuff. Use CCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/download) to clean registry and do a general disk cleanup.
-Dsru;9690']also, a cool tool to run every once in awhile is CC Cleaner.Do a google and you will find it.


Good call D :cheer2::croc::becky:

[[Jett]-RB]

-Dsru;9690']also, a cool tool to run every once in awhile is CC Cleaner.Do a google and you will find it.

I thought you redid your OS so often that you wouldn't need anything like that...... :P

RB :)

[[Jett]-Tank]

One other thing you can do is make sure you file system is ok by running the CheckDisk utility. From a command prompt run

CHKDSK /F /R

You'll get told you can't do that right now, but would you like to do it on next reboot? Answer Yes and reboot. Sometimes it takes a while to run, but I've saved many a PC with boot errors using Chkdsk. It will verify file integrity and scan for bad sectors on the HD.

-=Tank=-

[[Jett]-Dsru]

-XgrinderX;9691']Good call D :cheer2::croc::becky:

I am so lame, byte me!

[Chaser]

It's surprising how many people bring me their computers to be repaired and all i do is run virus scans and defrags. Doing so regularly will always result in better preformance.

The downside of the slowing as that sometimes it isn't something simple. A computer is like anything else, over time it just doesnt run as well as it did brand new for nothing more than the fact that the parts are old and not keeping up.

If its been awhile since you upgraded some parts like your processor and RAM it may be that it's just for them to die.

The up side is that you can usually find a nice replacement of either of these for fairly cheap prices.

If nothing works it may be worth your money to go ahead and upgrade a few of your parts, and if you throw them in and there's no improvement you usually will have 30 days to return them with no questions asked anyway.

Just a thought.

[Stability]

Thanks to everybody for your suggestions. I ran Defraggler in both regular and safe mode along with running CCleaner. Sadly, this didn't seem to help. I ran a check disk last night when I went to bed, so we'll see if that helped any.

Along the same note as Chaser. I agree that running that stuff regularly is key. I don't run defrag quite as much as I should, but I do a weekly virus scan and am very careful about what I download. So I really don't think it's anything like that.

I talked to our computer tech at work and his immediate response was simply that the hard drive is going out. Blah. Makes sense though I guess. The machine is about 3 years old, so it could be time for some of the weaker parts to be going out.

So does anybody have any other last suggestions before I go out and buy a new hard drive?

Thanks again to all for your time.

-Stab

[[Jett]-Willow]

So does anybody have any other last suggestions before I go out and buy a new hard drive?

Thanks again to all for your time.

-Stab

Nope, well could try a Reformat/Install, but you're going to have to do that anyways with a new HDD. HDD's dying is common, so be thankful it wasn't out of the blue. Get everything backed up, get a new HDD and go from there mang.

[Stability]

Ok, so I was looking at hard drives and found this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136075. Any thoughts? I really don't need that big of a hard drive, so I think the size on this one will do the trick.

I've never had to "replace" a hard drive before (installed a few). Anything I need know or be aware of?

[[Jett]-RB]

Why not spring the little bit extra for this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136074 Free shipping will make this less than or about $10 more for twice the space and cache.

RB :)

[[Jett]-Willow]

-rb;9718']why not spring the little bit extra for this http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=n82e16822136074 free shipping will make this less than or about $10 more for twice the space and cache.

Rb :)

this!

[[Jett-R]-MeDiuMRaRe]

it's amazing how the cost of storage has declined

[[Jett]-RB]

-MeDiuMRaRe;9723']it's amazing how the cost of storage has declined

Yeah, too bad the 10k RPM drives are still high...lol I love my Raptor :)

[Megadeth_Fan]

what kind of programs do you have running when you look at your startup tab in msconfig? I bet you have some kind of huge memory hog program running