Well, my laptop is acting weird .. it's VERY slow. I ran the Spybot scan, Norton scan, and also the CCleaner. Nothing unusual turns up. The only thing that I downloaded recently on this laptop was the Adobe Digital; which I have uninstalled to see if things change. No. It's still slow. What's up? Again, it's Window XP. I need to get this resolve quickly due to work on this computer. Thx.
have u tried restoring your computer to an earlier time when you didn't have the problem...if not then back up your important files and factory restore your laptop again
specs. what's installed. did it just randomly happened. how old is the unit. what exactly is very slow.
The computer is a 2 years old Dell Impesrion or something like that. My wife used a Window XP Prof. All I remember was after downloading the Adobe Digital, everything just "slow" down. From loading up to shutting down. Also, when I click on thing like "realplayer" .. it used to be click and pop up quickly .. now, it takes like a min or so to load up .. this is like over night .. i thought i caught a virus or spyware or something .. i ran the scans but nothing seems to help - everything came back clean. i restored but doesn't seen to help. it's not dying down or anything but just takes forever to load up.
Just to expand on this. You do that by going to the Windows Task Manager and sorting the columns by CPU to see which process is using the most amount of CPU. This is of course assuming that something is using so much CPU time that it slows everything else down. Does the slowdown happen with everything else ? For example Notepad, Word ? Something not directly related to multimedia like Realplayer in case it's a codec issue.
If you've done a a spyware and virus scan and still nothing odd running in the background, then you might be having problems with your hard drive.
Maybe your start up process, has something automatically loading as windows start up. try going into system config (through admin tools or download a systems tool free) and disable some programs you don't need at start up to prevent it eating up your computers resource. disable all then re enable one by one to see which is the culprit, sorry it's slow and takes many restarts. But I would recpmmend upgrade to windows 7.
backup everything and use the tool that came with the system or some other recovery tool to rollback your whole drive to factory settings, at least thats how i combat slowdown on my laptop but big hassle if you have tons of things on it.
it might now solve problem with apps to run in the start of windows process...if OP doesn't have the power to run w7, he will find it a drag too
try going for the last well known config, that should be before the slow down. if it still slows down, look at processes and see what is eating everything up. if still doesn't work then try backing up and reinstalling windows. usually that clears everything up but that takes a lot of time backing up and reinstalling all the programs. if after that it still runs slow they maybe a hard drive problem emerging.
It's still VERY slow. I checked out the task manager and the only thing running beside the web is the "idled system" .. dunno what that's for and I tried to disable it .. doesn't work. I dare not to reinstall anything until I have a chance to back up everything which will take a long time for me since I am busy these days .. reg work, two projs and the baby just arrived on Monday .. too much going on... Thus far, I have tried restore, last good config, and hiren's (not sure) .. nothing changes .. sigh .. if you know other ways, plz post up. I can't get win 7, this sys is not equip for it.
First of all congrats with the baby! You will definitely have lots of sleepless nights for the coming weeks/months, so I am not sure you will still have time to troubleshoot this Anyway, if you ever get some free time, then run 'msconfig' from Start/Run and go to the Startup tab. Deselect everything that is not required and restart your machine. What you do is basically temporarily disable some of the programs that startup during Windows boot. Do you notice any difference in performance ?
I'm going to have to agree with Nas on this, it will probably be the fastest way considering that you're short on time atm. However, I think Adobe Digital may have a hand with your problem, though I don't exactly know why. Next time you uninstall try something like "Your Uninstaller" to get rid of every trace of it from your computer. http://download.cnet.com/Your-Uninstaller/3000-2096_4-10143715.html
Thanks ya'll .. I was able to solve the prob over the long weekend. Apparently, it's the Symantec thing that's running and slowing things down .. the lucallback.exe file which I had no idea was doing that .. it's part of the Norton Antivirus thing. I uninstalled it and replaced it with Mcfee so things are back to normal. Sigh .. of relief....lol
Slightly off topic, but i also have a laptop problem my macbook's harddrive has decided to give in and i have all my work photos and music on there, does anyone know how i would be able to fix it or have a way that i can back up my work? i have heard of a "slave" port or something that can be put onto computers to back up but is there anything simillar to that for macs? thanks in advance, and i know i should have started a new thread but didnt want to waste thread space.
