Computer is slowing down

[John Chain]

Hi everyone, my computer is starting to lose its performance. I don't have any viruses or adware, I check every day. It just has a few problems. The main one is when I try to get it to sleep, the moniter goes black and it doesn't sleep, then I have to restart my computer. To make a long story short, its not workin the same way it was 7 years ago. Do you think I need to clean the dust out of the hardware (the computer's insides)? Happy New Year everyone, mine is in 3 hours and 22 minutes.

I have posted on this site so many times, its about time I became a member................................. .....................Nah.

[computerman]

have you ran a defrag. on your computer.

if you want more info. i need to know what os you have

[John Chain]

Oh yeah, I knew I forgot something when posting this. I have a compaq presario with Windows 98SE. I don't know much else. I got 127 mb RAM. and 712 of something else (lol). I run every clean up tool on my computer except defrag and some other compresser. I don't know what defrag does. Could I get a little description on what it does?

Happy New Year 2005!

Should all acquaintance be forgot? and never brought to mind? Should all acquaintance be forgot? and days of Auld Lang Syne?

[John Chain]

Oh yeah, I knew I forgot something when posting this. I have a compaq presario with Windows 98SE. I don't know much else. I got 127 mb RAM. and 712 of something else (lol). I run every clean up tool on my computer except defrag and some other compresser. I don't know what defrag does. Could I get a little description on what it does?

Happy New Year 2005!

Should all acquaintance be forgot? and never brought to mind? Should all acquaintance be forgot? and days of Auld Lang Syne?

[robertmillar]

More info on defrag here:
http://www.computerhope.com/software/defrag.htm

If you've never ran it, I suggest you do.

[John Chain]

Thank you. I will be sure to run it.

I'm sorry, I was lazy, I could have just searched the site for the answer.

[merlin_2]

see if advanced system optimizer speeds it up ?are you sure its 127 mbs of ram??

majorgeeks.com

become a member......you may no something..others do not?go for it.........>

[John Chain]

Sadly, it is only 127 mbs of RAM, I believe one of least amounts these days.

Is "advanced system optimizer" a microsoft standard program? It sounds familiar.

[John Chain]

Alright!!! (angry voice)  I defragged the C drive for TEN HOURS and I see no difference in speed. I'm losin it!! AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!


Just kidding. But not about the speed. The performance of my computer hasn't changed. Remember, it's not overwhelmingly slow, I can still use very well, but it is not at its optimal performance. Once again, would cleaning the dust out of my computer speed it up? I have never cleaned it. If so, Compaq's support site for hardware maintanence has moved so does anyone know of a good reference for cleaning computer hardware, preferably printable (LOL).

[dl65]

John Chain.....OMG ....If you haven't cleaned out the dust in 7 years , I'm surprised it still runs......lol
You should go out and buy a can of dust spray at a place like Radio shack ....I think they call theirs Velocity ........and while your at it a dust mask would be in order ......So shut down ....remove the side covers or the case........Dont poke around in there with your fingers.........just use the compressed air to blow out the dust ......pay particular attention to the heat sink.....(thats the thing which sits ontop of the CPU ......and probably has a cooling fan on it ) Do not let the fan blades spin while blowing out the dust.( I use a chopstick ....either plastic or bamboo to hold the fan from spinning ) Be sure that you blow all the dust out of the PSU...( power supply ) ......the thing that is up at the top at the back ...were the power chord from the wall plugs in .   Now that we have all the dust removed .......Do you regularly empty the Temporary Internet files and the History files . Do you have your Email setup to auto empty the deleted folder each time you close it up ? You asked about defragging...what does it do....ok here we go ......the hard drive contains something called sectors......there are thousands of them .....the size of the sector depends on the file format your system is using .......for example it may be FAT or FAT16 or NTFS......( if you want more info on that use google and search for file systems ) Consider your hard drive like a huge filing cabinet , containing many files. So when ever you need a file you pull open the drawer use the file and then just put it back wherever ...so pretty soon it takes forever to find any given file........What defragging does is attempt to move all these fragmented file back into some semblense of order....putting the operating system files on the beginning of the hard drive and then the misc. files after that and all the free space will end up at the back end of the drive .......as opposed to the way it is now , with bits and pieces of info stored all over the place ......In short it takes much longer to load anything .......
You didnt say which Spyware program you use.....
A good one used by a lot of people is AD-AWARE SE.......
http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10045910.html?part=69274&subj=dlpage&tag=button
Another good one is SpyBot Search and Destroy....
http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10122137.html?part=104443&subj=dlpage&tag=button
Another good one is Spy Sweeper by Webroot ....
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3263.html
I use all three of these regularly......several times a week ....and each of them will find something that the others didn't......It is also important to make sure when using these programs that you check to see if there are any updates ...for example Ad-aware updates 2 or three times a week.. Then of course your Anti-Virus and again always check to see if you have the latest update ...For example Norton update every Wednesday ..occassionaly more often if a new threat appears . Then of course there are the numberous updates which Micro Soft put out to patch security holes in the operating system , as well as updated drivers for your installed hardware .....ie vidio drivers , audio drivers as well as updated printer and scanner drivers ....So its not just a matter of buying a pc and simply using it ....but its like a vehicle if you look after it and service it regularly it should work a lot better than if you don't. The other thing tht you will discover is that as you begin to better maintain your pc , you will learn a lot more about how they work..... A word of caution ......if you ever see sites that offer to do a free scan of your system....Don't .... They use all sorts of tricks to get you to click on their "FREE" scan. You may see a warning notice appear on your screen advising you that your pc is infected with whatever ....but if you click on our "FREE" scan we will identify them for you and your pc will be running like new in several minutes.....So you think OMG .......I'd better use this free scan ........LOL.....the scan will turn up possibly 100s of items ......AND then to your horror you discover that if you wish to remove these intruders it will only cost you $39.99   ........what a joke ......and this goes on all the time ....Don't ever click on these so called FREE offers ......

Enough for now ......

Let us know how you make out .

dl65  

[John Chain]

First of all, I would like to say thanks for the reply and cleaning instructions. I think I mentioned somewhere that I take care of all software maintanence such as adware (yeah, I know about the FREE scan crap), deleting temp files, email, disk cleanup...etc. I am not new to computer software, just hardware. I will see to cleaning my computer. Once again, my computer runs fine, just not as fine as it started out to be. I'm telling you, this really isn't even a problem, just a minor annoyance that comes up maybe once a month ranging from a bad shutdown (I take care of that with shutdown supplements) to an unrecoverable stand-by.

If the computer's insides are close off, how does so much dust get in?

[Neil]

John, I suggest you buy diskeeper from www.executive.com. Try their free trial and see how quickly it defragments your computer. The built in defragmenter uses the same technology from well 98, and probably before. I think the XP defrag uses similar technology to diskeeper's. It's so fast I defragment every day. it used to take 15 mins or less on my two which were crammed full of data... not so long now I've formatted! Diskeeper is also designed to run in the background, so you can  work while it works. Don't try games though as they'll go slow obviously.

One major start up slowdown is the queue of programs you have to start up. I suggest you go to start > run > msconfig and look in startup. Remove any program entries you do not need. There are a few, such as explorer, systray, rundll32 etc which you do need. Generally speaking, if you have any icons load up on the right of the screen on the tray that you do not use regularly, you can disable them either with an option included in the program or by removing them from msconfig. If you need to use them, you can always load them up. Also try pressing control alt delete together once only and seeing what programs are loaded. I have only the needed system stuff, my firewall and virus scanner enabled in msconfig.

To find your system specs, go to start > run > dxdiag.

What is your harddrive speed? This is an often underestimated aspect of computer performance. I found a faster harddrive really sped things up.

Let us know if this helps.

[Fletchj]

-Have you thought about adding more RAM unless it is maxed out already.  
-Go throughout your computer and delete your past history, internet cookies, and anything else you don't need.  
-Here is a good cleaner: lavasoft.com <ad-aware SE pro>
-Check to see how your virtual memory is.  It is under the system icon in the control panel.  If your computer is page filing that would slow your apps. up quite a bit.   You can get a prog. that tells you exactly the percentages on the web.  Virtual memory tells you that you need more RAM.
Hope this helps a little bit.

[John Chain]

For the last time, I am not new to computer software. I have been working on them for 15 years. I know about msconfig, adware, cookies, everything. The hardware I am new to. As for defragmenting, it went 10 hours because its the first time ever defragging, sorry I failed to mention that. I believe my main problem is the dust in my CPU.

Once again. Does anybody know how so much dust gets into the computer even though it is boxed off and as very small holes to get through? Maybe the fan blows it in?

[merlin_2]

the fan on the psu is the one of the culprits.it acts like a hover sucking not only air in but dust as well.....try defrag in safe mode?? or chck /f  in the run box   it may speed it up......and the other culprit is  electronic components.....which cause static which attracts dust......take the back of the tv for more edvidence......... whats the  hard drive make have you got??

[Computer_Commando]

...Maybe the fan blows it in?

That's right!!!

[John Chain]

I am not sure of the hard drive that I have. It came with the computer, that's all I know. I don't have the Windows 98 disk or the computer manual (I should have saved those).

As for the dust, yeah that's what I expected, the fan.

Any other suggestions for removing it?

[Computer_Commando]

Blow it out any way you can.
These are nice.

[kaplan]

Hi

I am not sure if dust can really slow your PC. But one way or the other, it's good to clean them out. Dust always finds its way to anywhere!  

Perhaps you need to look into your harddrive. Use scandisk (or chkdsk.) and don't forget to cleanup the registry, because if you have too much junks left in the registry, it will slow down your PC.

Hope this help.

K

[kaplan]

BTW, forgot to mention, most softwares are really sloppy, when you uninstall softwares they always left a trail of junks behind in the registry, over a period of time, your registry is pilling up with unwanted data and slows down the PC. There is a very good freeware you can down load from CNET, it's call RegClean. Just delete every piece of unneeded junk. You can also download SystemMechinic a trial version, not a freeware, It can defrag the registry.
K

[Neil]

*Blocked Russian URL*/english.html
Get diskspeed from here to see how fast your harddrive is. (I have not tested this myself)

I did not mean to patronise your knowledge of computers and I am sorry if anything I said seemed like that.

[John Chain]

No problem Neil, I just want you guys to not waste time writing half a page on adware. As for the dust, I will try to blow it out, I don't want to touch anything with my fingers. I think dust can slow your computer because it interupts with signals being transfered through the hardware.

[John Chain]

About the diskspeed thing, it gave me an overall score of 1521, what does that mean?

Linear read: 22.0499 MB/Sec

Random Read: 1.7464 MB/Sec

[Neil]

It means your harddrive is faster than mine!
Score: 1119
Linear read: 9.5mb/s
Random read: 1.9mb/s

[John Chain]

No way! My computer is an old  piece of ****. Sorry for my language. I wish they posted an average standard or something like that.

[Neil]

Maybe it's the utility? I could swear I got a higher speed on another one... I've got a newish harddrive as well!

[John Chain]

Yeah that's what I figured. Do you know of any disk speed readers that come with sample average scores. Because if it just gives me a score, I just have no clue what it means.

[merlin_2]

save data to disk or website or cdr/w and format the hard drive...............(spring clean it)have you checked msconfig ___________typed in the run box to find out whats doing what??