My laptop took a few fits of "freezing" last night , everyting would stop, even alt-ctrl-del to bring up the task manager had no effect, there apppeared to be no CPU action taking place while it was frozen either. Today it is just running plain slow, i have firefox, messenger live and windows media player running now , and it takes 10 seconds or so to switch between programs.

I am virus scan last night, and it was defragmented a week ago, what else can i do to get things back up to speed? I have deleted all unused programs also.

Should i get everything i need off of this, format the drive and start over?

 

Try to run some Spyware programs on it.
My favorites are SpyBot and AdWare. They both are free.

 

I am somewhat weary on them , because i know some of them come with thier own list of spyware...

 

I've never had any problems with them. Besides wouldn't AdWare get rid of any spyware SbyBot added; and SpyBot get rid of any spyware AdWare added?

 

check your cpu fan for being plugged use compressed air to clear it out. depending how old it is(even new ones can do it), it sounds like the first signs of your hard drive failing.

 

I second this one. Our IT guys here at work even use those programs. Each one catches something the other one misses, but they don't seem to have any ill effects in a couple of years of using them.

 

Well , i am going to backup everything i need off of this computer this weekend, and see how much longer the drive holds up , if that indeed is the problem, then i might get my monies worth out of that extended warranty i paid for.

In the meantime, i will take a chance and run the adaware , as well as spybot.

 

Betcha spyware is the problem. Its worth a shot cause its free...so is cleaning all the hay out of your fan....

Definitely, it wouldnt hurt to reformat and start all over again (although its a PITA)...

 

if it seems ok when you start using it then freezes up later, it may be overheating... Check all the fans as suggested...

 

With a name like "SpyBot- search and destroy' who wouldn't want to run it??
It seems to catch a lot more than ad aware.

 

I agree on the possibility of overheating,also reseat your memory chips.They are usually easy to get to and that might be all you need.Click on Start/Programs/Startup and see what is loading when you boot up.Most of the stuff that installs itself there can be removed and started manually when you need its services.Do a disk cleanup from MyComputer by selecting the drive and clicking on "Properties".Allow it to remove all cookies and Temp files.
A lot of computers these days are able to monitor CPU temperature,sometimes you have to enable it in bios setup.If all fails to help and your CPU temp is within range you can start thinking about your harddrive.If you are reading the correct amount of installed memory and the harddrive activity light is showing a lot of activity then it may be time to start saving whatever data that you want to preserve.SpinRite might be able to save it if you know somebody who has it or buy a copy,it has saved a lot of drives for me.Ron G

 

I just replaced the hard drives in 2 Dell computers last week, one was a laptop and the other was an Optiplex, which looked like a laptop in a larger case. The Optiplex just crashed and the laptop I replaced the CPU cooler/ heat pipe assy. That one would run for a while then shut down from overheating.
The owner called Dell support and ordered a new hard drive with the model numbers and all their asset numbers and had it sent next day air. 1 week later it finally got here and when I opened it was the wrong part.
I went to Fry's and bought a 80gb. Hitachi drive to replace the 40gb. unit.

Anyhow what I was going to say was be sure you have the right restore and driver disk for the machine before you start, the sealed pack of disk had the wrong driver disk.

The OS would load up but I had no drivers, I did find them on the Dell support but no way to load them onto the machine because the NIC drivers were among the drivers I needed to load.

I had to install a USB/ Ethernet adapter so I could drag them across my network onto the Dell.

It all worked out in the end but it would have been allot nicer if they had supplied the right disk.

Dell wanted $240.00 for a 40 gb. hard drive that was refurbished and I got the one from Fry's, 80gb. for $150.00

I put new Hitachi drives in both.

I have a client where her kids keep installing SpyBot on the company network.
It takes out at least I workstation a week by deleting parts of the operating system, I Ghost each workstation and save it on the server so it is an easy restore.

 

I got my landlords son to do a cleanup on it last night ( he is a computer tech for a local company) and it was working alot better until i tried to open a piece of software a few minutes ago , and it crashed, pulled the battery and the power cord , as that is the only way to kill it, and it works fine again now. I can actually see the fan , and it still cycles on and off as it did when it was brand new...

I am going to axe that software that froze it , and try a version from a different developer tonight , and see if it makes a difference. I will be backing up my files this weekend , and then hoping this thing crashes beyond repair, if they can't fix it , i get a new one

 

Well , i am still having trouble with the computer randomly crashing, clicked on a link to the dieselgarage last night , and wham, crashed... this afternoon , went to switch songs in windows media, bam , crash... ran a third spyware program , ewido , supposed to be a really good one , ran the 30 day trial , and it found another 385 files , some of them were backdoor torjans, keystroke recorders , etc. cleaned all that stuff off , cleaned out my temp files , removed unused programs (there was one there call odyessy client, anyone know what that is? i know i didn't install it) and it seems to be working better , so far...

 

If you still thinks it's overheating PM me your e-mail address. I wrote a VBScript that will query the temperature probe via the BIOS and report on some stuff. I don't know if it will show you anything, but it may be worth trying.