Vista Premium Incredibly Slow

Hello,
Recently my friend's Fujitsu Lifebook laptop has been running very slow. The problem affects everything on the computer, but is especially bad when you right click on an icon on the desktop or start menu. When you right click on an icon, Windows Explorer freezes and it asks if you would like to restart the program or wait for it to respond. When you restart Windows Explorer, the problem does not go away. I checked to see if anything unusual was running in the background, but there is nothing out of the ordinary. His laptop is quite fast (Intel Core2Duo with 4gb of ram and a 500gb sata hdd). One thing that I noticed is that when the computer is idle (ie. nothing is running), it uses 1.71 gb of ram. Is this normal for vista? He is running Windows Vista Home Premium 64bit. What could be causing the slowdown?

Thanks for the help

 

Hi and welcome

Locate the RAM ( usually behind a panel underneath the machine ).
Take out one of the modules.
Try running the machine now.

If it is still slow - swap the module for the other one.

Try running the system again.

 

I would download MalwareBytes and Install it and update it, then run a full scan in safemode then in normal mode.

this looks like a malware issue here.

have you checked your drivers are upto date and there are no issues in the device manager?

have you installed any programs or updates recently that you may think is causiing this?

 

Their is also a 3rd option, what Anti virus software is installed? would it by any chance be AVG? seen this before on a Vista machine with AVG installed removed AVG and things got a whole lot faster

 

+1 on that

Go to start menu once everything check and type in the search box perfmon /report and press enter, it will take 60 seconds to generate a report and then look for any discrepancies with hardware/programs etc.

 

Hello,
Thanks for all of the suggestions.

I would like to try to avoid messing with the hardware for now until I can rule out a software issue, but I will keep this in mind if nothing else works.

I will try this

He is using Norton Anti-virus.

Could you clarify what you mean by "discrepancies with hardware/programs"?

Thanks to everyone for their responses

 

http://computerhelpf...uts&showtut=105

in the report it will give a list of diagnostic report "pass" or "fail" if there are any fails then read the report and see what the problem maybe

it could be the fact that drivers are out dated.

it could be a simple thing such as the laptop needs a good clean up, how old is the laptop?

you may want to download and install a small program called Ccleaner and run the cleaner and the registry cleaner but make sure you backup the registry when prompted and be careful on what you delete.

also you may want to defrag your drive using the defraggler.

 

I missed the AV discription, i realize you have paid quite alot of money for norton but to be honest this AV kills the performance, it boggs down the system.

you may want to consider installing Microsoft Security Essentials this is a very good security software and i recommend this and its FREE.

 

That memory usage on Idle is acceptable.

All good advice given so far.IMO.

I am thinking Explorer.exe could be a contributing factor as well,if the K's are exceptionally high in Task Manager.

Wouldn't hurt to kill Explorer.exe and set it as a new Task under "File".

 

DSTM +1


To be really fair if the laptop is around the 2 year old mark, my personal suggestion would be a re install, but that's just what i would do.

I always re install after about 18 months but thats because i do a lot of stuff on my system, so not necessarily evryone's choice to do such a task as we all know that its a pain to get all settings the way you like them & putting your programs back on

 

Thanks for clarifying. I will try that. The laptop is about a year old. We tried defraging the hard drive with the windows defraging utility, and I have yet to hear from my friend about if it helped.

I will try disabling Norton temporarily and see if it helps.

One thing that I noticed was taking a lot of memory was "search indexer". Do you happen to know what this is?

The laptop is about 1 year old. My first thought was to reinstall too, but he has over 400gb of data, and none of my hard drives (internal or external) are big enough.

Thanks again for all of these suggestions, I will get back to you on how they work.

 

You will need to totally remove it by uninstalling you can get removal tool from HERE this program really gets a tight grip of the system, But visit the norton website to see more info on how to use it.


and your main problem is what you just pointed out "400gb" of data..... what size is the HDD?

let us know how it goes.

Go HERE for info on search index function and how to disable it.

 

This is why I always have my OS on a separate Drive/Partition, I know this would involve extra cost but it would be worth his while investing in a external HDD and backing up his Data, Hard drives in laptops only take one drop or knock to cause a fatal malfunction and then you are looking at large bucks to recover the data from a specialist.

I have two Desktops at home networked together, each contains a drive with all valuable irreplaceable data backed up, put more simply computer 'A' has a back up of Computer 'B' and Computer 'B' has a back up of computer 'A'

 

How much free space does he have on the drive?
Right click on C:\ > Properties.

There should be at least 10% - 15% free space.

 

How much RAM is there in the machine ? - 4Gig, should have read the post properly.
Run something like CCleaner to cleanup all the temp and junk files.
Disable all un-necessary auto start programs.
Use Readyboost (if you dont already).
Disable Aero.
Un-install all unneeded / unwanted programs.
Unless you really uise it, lose the sidebar.

All of the above will help, post back if you need details.

The freezing when you right click can be due to either a bad install of a program or a corrupted context menu handler among other reasons. To check the Context Menu Handlers you need to download an app called ShellExView I dont know if you are familiar with it?

Basically it will scan the registry for all the shell extensions (right click commands). Once it has scanned the system, a list will be displayed, you need to identify the context menu handlers.
Sort the results using 'Type' so that the context menu handlers are grouped together.

General rule here is to disable NON-Microsoft context menu handlers, personally I would disable all of the non-MS at the same time and work backwards. By that I mean disable all of them, restart the machine and check to see if the problem persists. Hopefully it will be gone so enable the handlers either one at a time (takes a long time) and restart each time then check or enable them 5 at a time and reboot etc.
If you disabled all the non-microsoft handlers and the problem was still there then in a command prompt type sfc /scannow and press 'Enter'.
The system file checker will scan the system for corrupted and missing files then repair them.

 

Read the thread Please, I know its rare round here, but I think its something we should all try doing lol, well once a month would do to start.

 

I did.

Nowhere does it say exactly how much free space there is.
I can assume that there is more than 15% free because he was able to defrag but I was not prepared to accept that "500GB hard drive" and "he has over 400gb data" equate to enough free space.

Over 400GB could easily be nearly 500GB.

It is easier to ask the specific question - which I did.

 

Time to wait for Murray to get back to us. There seems to be a bit of overload here

 

Thanks to everyone for their help. I really appreciate it.

Upon following Bugsy's advice of running MalwareBytes in safe mode, I found that MalwareBytes found one virus. Upon removing it, the problem was solved.

Thanks again

 

glad it solved your issue.

also scan you system regular and keep your AV/Malware program upto date too.

Ccleaner is also a good small utility too but only use the registry side of it occasionally and backup your registry when prompted