Help computer taking too long to load.

[carol80]

The kids are ready to throw my computer out.
My problem is that it takes about Half an hour to load from the time i switch it on.
My computer is so slow.Is there any way i can speed it up.

Help Please

Carol

[Rex N P]

Hi Carol

Do you do regular cleanups of your hard disk (c: drive)?  Disk Cleanup helps free up space on your hard drive. Disk Cleanup searches your drive, and then shows you temporary files, Internet cache files, and unnecessary program files that you can safely delete. You can direct Disk Cleanup to delete some or all of those files.

To open Disk Cleanup, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to
System Tools, and then click Disk Cleanup.

You should do this every few days.  If you already do it, then I can't think of anything else that might speed up your computer.

Rex

[JAP]

Hi Carol,

I guess that the techo people might like to know more details about your computer e.g. whether it's a PC or a Mac, and - assuming that it is a PC - what version of Windows you are using, what the capacity of your computer is, etc.

I certainly hope you get some good answers!

This is for the selfish reason that my daughter's computer is now taking forever and a day to load!  She has a very new computer with Windows XP and huge capacity.  She is a beginner and complained to her Broadband provider; they assured her that it is a Windows problem.  Her aged mother (moi!) is not exactly a Luddite but I certainly don't live in an up-to-date computer world.  You will appreciate this when I tell you that I'm sending this on an old IBM ThinkPad cobbled together out of bits and pieces of 3 old ThinkPads and running Windows 98  - and which doesn't even have a sound card . 

The slowness seems to have developed for my daughter since she started using the WebCam and Skype; I think she might also have inadvertently downloaded a couple of programs (an HP - games - one and an AOL one).

I've just been checking the Web and found the following sites which seem interesting:
http://asknerd.net/slowcomputer.html
http://fix-pc-errors.com/slow-computer.htm

But I wouldn't be game to try anything!

Let's hope good answers are forthcoming.

JAP

[Indaloman]

Use a cleaner program like nCleaner, its free, this will clean out all the old temp and orphaned files. BUT BE CAREFUL, the cleaner side of the program is safe enough, but don't use the Registry Cleaner UNLESS YOU KNOW EXACTLY what you are doing otherwise you could end up having a PC which no longer works at all. Youngsters download a lot of junk to us, jewels to them!

[pjbuk007]

I use Ccleaner every day or so. 

You can download it here:-

http://www.ccleaner.com/

I have used it for at least a year, and I just let it find and delete everything it wants to.  No problems and it seems safe.

If you do this (which is strongly advised), you will have lost your cookies and have to log in again to sites like this.   Which I really do not mind having to do, and is much safer anyway.

if you use XP and have different users set up you have to run ccleaner logged on as each one.

[JAP]

Sorry to ask!

But are these 'solutions' relevant for a woefully slow-loading computer which is brand new, running XP, and with heaps and heaps of capacity on its hard disk?  I know that there are things like Disk Cleaner (or something similar) which I am regularly asked to run because I have ancient computers with little capacity which tend to run out of space; they certainly need regular cleaning out in order to provide more space (whether that's hard disk space or whatever I don't know).  But when it comes to a new computer with almost limitless amounts of hard disk space ...

Over to the experts 

JAP

[pjbuk007]

Something must have happened to the new computer, this is why I suggest using ccleaner.  As far as I can tell you have nothing to lose.

[julianb]

Sometimes when you install programs, they ask to be included in your "start-up" list ie they load into the working area when you start your computer up.  Often you don't need those until you need them, and therefore can just launch them as and when you want.

I use spybot search and destroy to check for trojans, spyware and this also has a useful utility for looking at your start-up list, giving comments against the relevance of various items (in most cases). You can get spy-bot at http://www.spybot.info/en/spybotsd/index.html  Spy-bot is freeware (but donations can be given).  It is recognised as one of the best utilities around.

JULIAN

[downside]

Forget about lots of files on a PC, it has nothing to do with how fast a computer boots up.  If your PC takes 30 Minutes (literally) before you can start using it then there must be something seriously wrong.

Assuming you have a reasonable amount of RAM and a relatively modern processor and your hard drive is less than 90% full then you should be able to do something productive after a couple of minutes.  If not then you need to check what processes are running:

Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to bring up Task Manager as soon as the desktop appears after the boot process and then click on the Processes tab.
Look down the CPU column for any intense activity.  If you discover a specific process that is hogging your resources then check whether it can be prevented from starting up during the boot process.  Many processes do not need to run at start up.  I always have less than 30 processes running at any one time, so if you have more than that and you have an old PC then it is likely to be slow.

REDUCE THE NUMBER OF PROCESSES THAT ARE RUNNING.

downside