Need help with slow laptop

[FDM]

I have an older laptop that I use on limited occasions - it is running Win7 64 bit Premium with a Celelon 900 CPU, 250GB HDD (68GB used) and 3 GB ram.

I know that the Celeron 900 is no noted for speed and not fast be today's standards but recently it has become agonizingly slow to respond to anything I attempt to open (sometimes several minutes). I have run a variety of cleaners, optimizers, disk checks/repairs, antispyware, virus and maleware scans to no avail. Also have disabled most all startups and switched most all services to manual.
I have Comcast that provides between 80 and 90 Mbps internet speed.

I would appreciate any suggestions on any additional steps I might undertake to resolve this slow response issue.

 

[TechnoMage2016]

What do you mean, when you say an "older laptop"? That doesn't tell us much or give us much to go on. Eh?

I have several old laptops, from different makers, that now run Windows Ultimate/32 and all work great.
One is an older Toshiba, that originally came out with Windows XP on it, but now with 2gb of ram, and a 120 GB SSD, and a new battery, it's running great, and I use it almost every day.

But because of the natural tendency of a laptop to run slower than a desktop, to conserve power and generate less heat, they do require some great tweaking and tuning to get the best performance out of them.

Of course, keeping the HD clean of junk, is important, but there's a lot more to getting the very best performance out of any laptop. Adding an SSD will really ramp up the performance of any laptop.

When you're using a small and slow HD, a huge jump in performance can be had by telling Windows to move its Kernel off of the HD and into ram memory on boot-up, where it can run MUCH faster. I do that on every computer I set up or tune up. You can find that registry tweak, by doing a Google search.

It's amazing to me, how many things like the above mentioned tweak, that are already built into the Windows Registry by the programmers at Microsoft. I call those things "Safe Defaults", that do nothing but slow down the operation of Windows. I applaud the guys who have taken the time and made the effort to find those Defaults and post their 'fixes' to the internet.

Good Luck!
TechnoMage

 

[MilesAhead]

I would appreciate any suggestions on any additional steps I might undertake to resolve this slow response issue.

Run a diagnostic on the HD(I assume it is a spinner.) If it is on the way out it is common that the OS retries the operation when trying to read or write data. The necessity to perform the operations multiple times could be what is slowing the system down.

Also I would back up your data while the HD is still working.

If the diagnostic says the drive is good then you can go from there. But old drive suddenly slow is often an indicator of immanent drive failure. Do the backup first just in case.

 

[Eric3742]

Try to go for SSD, as it really fast response.

Before SSD, the laptop booting take more than 2+ minutes.
After SSD, the booting take much less then 1 minute.

As for surfing, it also help and the webpages loading is really fast.

For a limited SSD, it is best to install Windows + Program Files, as it take about 50GB, depend on number of programs.
But do take note you need to add, say, 30 to 50 GB for those necessary files, that is the pagefile, system restore point for example. This may take up to 20GB, depend.
Including any new programs you want to install in the future.

All those downloaded & data files, put it into another HDD, such as 250GB.
Finally, do consider some storage for backup image, and others.

 

[Holmes177]

Turn off automatic updates. They will push a Celeron CPU to 100%.

 

[TechnoMage2016]

Windows 7 is nearing the end of its supported life and MS is grudgingly still providing updates, but....
I've already seen Win-7 updates totally disable Win-7.
So my best advise (only a suggestion) is to just disable Windows Updates, unless, you have the capability to do a complete C: drive backup or clone, before accepting any more MS updates.

Just last week, I had a customer who got an MS Update and then his PC would no longer boot up.
Some critical system files were either deleted or corrupted and no attempt at a repair would work.
So the only fix possible was to Restore a year old backup. That's never good, to have to use a backup that is a year old. That's why I do my own backups on a weekly (not weakly) basis.

Once I got that man's PC back up and running normally, and all his software up to date, I made for him another Backup Image file, using my old favorite Backup program, "Ghost 11.5".

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Click Start and type in the search box
resource monitor
Hit the enter key or click on the suggestion
You should land on the Overview page post a screen shot so we might see what is going on


Most common cause lately has been svchost.exe acting up so if you see that on the top of the cpu list see if these windows updates are installed KB3020369 & KB3172605
If not manually install them.

 

[FDM]

followed your suggestion and when resource monitor opens the window is empty? I have disabled windows update becasue it was not working since then a noticeable imprisonment in CPU usage.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
I'd make sure these updates are installed KB3020369 & KB3172605 they have consistently worked to chill svchost.exe from acting up which is associated with the update system.

 

[FDM]

Thanks for the assistance thrashzone. I am at a dead end regarding how to see which updates have been installed. Since I disabled windows update and configured it to never download or install updates I have not figured out how to make that determination? Any suggestions?
Since disabling WU the CPU usage is so far in normal ranges and not at 100% consistently.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
There have been so many issues with high cpu usage I lost count

But one thing that has cured the majority is making sure those updates are installed
How to tell
Well easiest I suppose is to try and install them if they exist you'll get a message saying so
http://www.sevenforums.com/windows-...5-how-restore-windows-update.html#post3279127

 

[Bernardus]

WU is a pain in the a*s.
But dust in the ventilator or the CPU is a main problem also.
The CPU will downgrade when it becomes to hot.
Blow it out with a pressed air bottle.
WU is better manually done when you decide to leave it for a while.
Automatic search for updates is using far to much resources.

Windows index search is also a CPU killer.

 

[Skeleton11223]

press win+r then type sysdm.cpl press enter go to the advanced tab and where it says performance click settings now just disable some visual effects.