Laptop agonizingly slow any fix?

I hadn't realised how slow my ACER notebook (XP) was until I bought another laptop (Dell, VISTA)
Being just about able to "do" simple inernet stuff, no games, spreadsheets, etc.
is there any way to speed up the Acer, easily?

 

How old is it/What is the hardware in it?

Do you mean that you only want to use it for simple internet stuff? (I assume by simple internet stuff you mean social media/email/general web browsing.) Or that it can only do that and you would like to be able to do more.

 

...that 89 gig porn collection has got to go. That and closing a couple of dozen tabs on Firefox.

 

89 GB... amateur. lol

My 2.5 year old MacBook is running the horrible, yet best FireFox with a hundred tabs open pretty easily. I had the same problem in 2010 with my Windows computer. It would hang for 10 seconds and then do a little, and then hang again... I dumped all my files to external hard drives and made the switch. You could also format and reinstall Windows or Linux. Look into VirtualBox to use for web browsing if you still use Windows. Max out your RAM as well.

 

You may want to define "easily" as well. There are plenty of things you might try that aren't complicated but can be quite long and tedious (I would put something like reinstalling XP in this category).

 

I suggest running the following programs:
CCleaner
Glary Utilities
windirstat (locate what folders/files are taking up all your space)
Superantispyware
Disk Defrag
chkdsk /r and /f

Running the last two programs will take several hours as will running chkdsk.

 

OK, all valid points....ummmm....I haven't a clue wtf you are saying
PLEASE, just point me towards whatever I can run(?) that will help
It is not the "incoming" server(?) as my Dell laptop is pretty fast. It must be "Ghosts In The Machine" as they say.
What should I do first....as far as dumping the whatever and re installing...ferget it..I don't have the disc or the "expertise
PLEASE....be kind....you guys learned this because of work or whatever...I retired (1990) before Al Gore invented the internet (as I have stated before), so whatever I "know" is self taught...by trial and mostly error....(and I don't have a local 12 year old to do this for me)

 

Ok, one last question then.

Do you have anything valuable on the machine that you would be unhappy about losing?

 

89 gigs worth.

*rimshot*

I thought it was common practice for people to make back-ups with external HDDs.

Could blast my laptop with a bazooka right now and only lose the last week or so.

 

You can hire a teenager, it is summer job season... Just come up with a list of things you want done and the price you are willing to pay. But it is on you to make sure your data is safe and backed-up.

I doubt running anything will really fix things.

External hard drives are pretty cheap. Pretend that you know that your current hard drive will stop working in 7 days. You have to get everything off of it and make a copy of important stuff on the second drive. Backup bookmarks, make a list of the programs you want to re-install, and organize your files into the proper folders. If your e-mail is saved locally, make sure it is backed up.

Formatting and re-installing an operating system is not hard for someone who has been around computers. It will fix your problems. Have the teenager partition the drive and install Linux Mint. It will be good for both you and the teenager to learn how to do it, and will tell you if it is a hardware or software problem the next time this happens.

 

Cool story bro. I never knew you were so tech savvy. [/snark]

I mean, yes most people know to and know how to back up files they don't want to lose. Someone who 'retired (1990) before Al Gore invented the internet' might not. And anyone may have things that though not important enough to clutter up space on a backup drive they would nevertheless like to save if they can. Particularly if they're going to be doing something which might cause them to lose it or something they know is going to cause them to lose it (like installing a new OS).

 

Just sayin'. Snark noted. Assume you're the kind of guy that wipes once and doesn't look.

Exactly how tech savvy do you have to be to plug in a wire and let the automatic backup do its thing?

A USB external HDD is a lot easier to use than a 3.5" floppy. It's not like he has to copy *.* to A: 500 times.

I mean, shit, old people save silly stuff like credit card statements from 1994. Even my ancient-ass parents keep backups.

I understand the completely oblivious mentality but that doesn't mean I have to accept it. I also own a fire extinguisher and have a spare tire.

Terabytes are dirt cheap. There's no excuse not to save everything. Concept is pretty simple: If you won't delete it, might as well keep it and a backup.

 

The fact that it's easy and cheap doesn't mean everyone does it. Go stand at an Electronics Store service counter for an hour and marvel at the number of people who are going to lose their Irreplaceable Data because they didn't know hard drives don't last forever.

Ask some of the folks here who have done help desk work, it's a worthwhile question to ask someone before you're about to get down and dirty with their OS or possibly installing a new one.

And my back ups are in quintuplet, counting the DVD backups as 1.

 

I want to party with your quintuplets. And so, basically, you're saying:

And this is why the terrorists are winning.

 

Just because you don't know how to do something doesn't mean that you can't learn how to do it. Even if you have been retired for 22 years. (sounds nice when you have another week of work in a few hours)

How to Backup Windows XP to an External Hard Drive | eHow.com

Or you can select the files, copy and paste to the other external hard drive.

It is a good practice to do anyways. At my first job, some woman had been working for 2 years on a document that she only saved to her desktop. Well, when us computer techs came in to replace her computer, we copied all of the files (but didn't put the file onto the new desktop), well you can imagine the phone call our boss got.

Backup your files. It is important.

 

I have heard about a service called CARBONITE which backs up your computer automatically..any comments?

 

I'm sure it works. But, in your case, it would just be another program running in the background taking up resources*.

*I think, doesn't it do file back-up in real-time by uploading files to the internet?

I don't know how many files you have or how much data your ISP will let you transfer to the internet.

It is an off-site, professionally maintained backup of your files though.

 

Been there more than once where the hard drive was giving clear death signals at least a week in advance. I had some 250-400MB drives do that years ago and most recently the hard drive in my Dell laptop that I replaced with a sightly larger one and Ubuntu.

Oddly enough out of those older drives that failed then two of them were IBM Deathstars and one of them is a 40 GB that still works today.

I had to spend waaay too many hours going through .CHK files to recover pictures a few years and I knew full well the drive that had my only copies was dying. I use Mozy for off-site backups now and use my Terabyte drive for local backups.