Sarnie Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 Hi Guys, I've got a Sony Vaio laptop and it's sending me crazy!! It's a few years old now but it's getting soooooooo slooooooow now I think I'm going to put my foot through the screen any day now! On start up, I daren't even try to load up a browser window for at least 20 mins whilst it wakes up. Sometimes I click on something and it can can up to a full minute for it to do what I've asked it. I'm not asking it do to a great deal; I only have a few programs open at any one time and one IE browser window open with about three tabs open at any one time. So the question I have are; a) Is there something I can be doing to speed it up? Deleting stuff? De frag hard drive? System clean up? etc etc Is it worth considering upgrading the RAM, Hard drive and/or processor? c) Should I just bite the bullet and buy a brand new laptop?? System specs; Sony Laptop VGN-N38E Intel Pentium Dual Core Processor T2130 1.86GHz 1Gb DDR2 SDRAM 120Gb HDD (37GB 'FREE' apparently) Intel Media Graphics Accelerator 950 Windows Vista Thanks for any help! Liam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ekona Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 Back everything up and reinstall from scratch. If that doesn't work to your liking, then add some more RAM. If it's still not there, then I'd buy another one. Everyone will now come on and tell you that it's because you're running Vista, but they're wrong. It's just because of all the stuff you've added over the years, and even a defrag will only help so much. Happens to us all, and a reinstall is free way to speed everything up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AK350Z Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 +1 Clean install works wonders. Also try disabling your antivirus if you have it, thats a major cause of disk thrashing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparky370z Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 just buy a new one, i had a crappy laptop, which was quite old. it was so slow. i had it knicked outta the car. bought a new one, holy moly, so wish i had done it before. its amazing, so fast. battery life is 8 hours, windows 7 is cool too. dont have to cost the earth either Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gangzoom Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 Just to be contrivisol....have a look at Apple laptops . I paid £1600 for my 2008 MacBookPro in 2008 (Still going for £450-500 on eBay), after 4.5 years still running well, currently on the latest version of MacOS, handles photoshop/Lightroom with no problems, even have Windows XP on it for running SPSS and BMW coding software. My previous Apple Laptop lasted me 8 years (2000-2008), was still working when I sold it on eBay for £200 after nearly a decade of abuse!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glrnet Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 Yep, try clean install first and see where you go from there but with 1gb of ram it's going to struggle I would have said Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spursmaddave Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 Running Vista certainly doesn't help I had an old 'Vista' laptop, switched to 7 and made a big difference, I wouldn't recommend 8 yet too early to tell.... But I would still buy a new laptop, even a cheap basic one will wipe the floor with yours even after you wipe it, reinstall windows and even upgrade it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarnie Posted November 17, 2012 Author Share Posted November 17, 2012 Running Vista certainly doesn't help I had an old 'Vista' laptop, switched to 7 and made a big difference, I wouldn't recommend 8 yet too early to tell.... But I would still buy a new laptop, even a cheap basic one will wipe the floor with yours even after you wipe it, reinstall windows and even upgrade it... I wouldn't disagree that even a cheap new laptop will wipe the floor with the one I'm using it's just I don't actually need it to do a great deal. It's used purely for work which is about 80% internet based. It's never been used to play games or watch films or run multiple heavy usage programs like CAD or PS etc. I just want to be able to click on a URL and not have to wait up to a minute a times for the page to load. The Mrs is ready to spend about £500 on a replacement for me for xmas but if I can do something like a clean install to bring it back to anywhere near a usable performance level or just chuck £50 at some RAM etc, then I'd rather do that and spend the money on something else Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spursmaddave Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 Has the laptop ever been wiped and windows reinstalled, and I don't mean by a setup disc from the manufacturer? It is amazing how much junk gets inatalled on new PC's Iwould take the advice a few posts up, back up all your personal stuff, install Windows 7 (upgrade from Vista shouklnt be too dear) install a fresh new OS then maybe a little ram upgrade... Should do the trick, If I lived nearby I would do it for you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spursmaddave Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 Just one thing check the ram carefully, it may be 2 500mg stick and may be better to get 2 matched 1gb or better still 2 x 2gb matched Most places like mr memory you can input your model and they will suggest options... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarnie Posted November 17, 2012 Author Share Posted November 17, 2012 Has the laptop ever been wiped and windows reinstalled, and I don't mean by a setup disc from the manufacturer? It is amazing how much junk gets inatalled on new PC's Iwould take the advice a few posts up, back up all your personal stuff, install Windows 7 (upgrade from Vista shouklnt be too dear) install a fresh new OS then maybe a little ram upgrade... Should do the trick, If I lived nearby I would do it for you I'll send it to you PS: Your Movember is pathetic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spursmaddave Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 (edited) Has the laptop ever been wiped and windows reinstalled, and I don't mean by a setup disc from the manufacturer? It is amazing how much junk gets inatalled on new PC's Iwould take the advice a few posts up, back up all your personal stuff, install Windows 7 (upgrade from Vista shouklnt be too dear) install a fresh new OS then maybe a little ram upgrade... Should do the trick, If I lived nearby I would do it for you I'll send it to you PS: Your Movember is pathetic Have you seen my head? It's a desest nothing grows there Edited November 17, 2012 by spursmaddave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aliensurfer Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 +1 Clean install works wonders. Also try disabling your antivirus if you have it, thats a major cause of disk thrashing. As someone who works for a major AV company, this makes me cringe. They DO have an impact on performance, of course, but to disable it completely is just asking for a whole lot of trouble. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ekona Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 I've argued for a while that if you're smart and don't click on silly links or visit dodgy websites, then you don't need AV software at all, just a firewall. That's another debate altogether though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aliensurfer Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 But what happens when you visit sites like bbc.co.uk, or nfl.com, or any of the other perfectly valid sites infected with drive by malware over the past 12 months. Ill not preach, my day job is just that, but I spend numerous days a week training staff on best practice, and life without AV is a whole heap of trouble. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spursmaddave Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 But what happens when you visit sites like bbc.co.uk, or nfl.com, or any of the other perfectly valid sites infected with drive by malware over the past 12 months. Ill not preach, my day job is just that, but I spend numerous days a week training staff on best practice, and life without AV is a whole heap of trouble. + lots but as with most things if you go with the majority then you get the worst laggy AV software like Norton etc there are far less intrusive and better options out there... Hope you don't work for Norton Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aliensurfer Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 I don't work for Norton, slag away It's all a balance between security and performance at the end of the day Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ekona Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 Hand on heart, I've never visited NFL.com. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spursmaddave Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 I don't work for Norton, slag away It's all a balance between security and performance at the end of the day Luckily 'most' of those who really NEED AV are those least concerned with performance which always makes me chuckle when someone says oh my packard bell pc that i got from pc world is running slow..... Yes because it is trying to run 1,000,000,000 processes that you will never, ever, ever need while you conpose your emails to the Daily Mail on Immigration Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spursmaddave Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 Sorry that was a bit specific as it was a neighbour Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JetSet Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 But what happens when you visit sites like bbc.co.uk, or nfl.com, or any of the other perfectly valid sites infected with drive by malware over the past 12 months. Ill not preach, my day job is just that, but I spend numerous days a week training staff on best practice, and life without AV is a whole heap of trouble. +1, one of the regular sites I visited, Trackmania.com got infected with one of those really nasty virus's that got past Avast (My database was a couple of months out of date ) and wasted a couple of days of my time cleaning up the mess it made. Caroline got a less nasty one on her laptop which I traced back to one of the Craft sites she was on most days. I have used Norton in the past but it proved to be a real memory hog and caused lots of false positives and was an absolute pig to integrate into my network. As far as Laptops go, I just get a new one every 3 years or so as eventually the battery, fans, power connector or in worst case scenario the backlight will fail. Pete Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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