My laptop used to do everything at super speed and now it works very slow
I have a 3 year old Toshiba Satellite (bought new) series P15-S420. It used to do everything at super speed. Now it is very, very slow! I’ve uninstalled all my heavy programs that I added on (like Photoshop, games, etc…) and there has been no change! My husbands HP has an accelerator control. Does Toshiba have one hidden somewhere? Any ideas and or advice from anyone would be helpful! Again thanks for any and all help.
Usually a laptop works very slow because of the three following problems.
1. Installed spyware or adware programs consume a lot of resources and slow down the laptop. Open up the task manager (right click on the task bar) and check the CPU usage in the performance tab. From my experience, the CPU usage might vary 0-10% when the laptop is idle. If it’s constantly over 50%, then you might have some malicious software installed on your laptop. You can try to clean it with an adware/spyware removal tools, for example spybot. Sometimes it’s very hard to get it completely clean and in this case I would recommend restore the operating system back to original factory defaults. You can restore the factory defaults if you boot the laptop from a recovery CD or DVD. Before you run a recovery CD/DVD, back up all important data from the hard drive because it would be erased and reformatted during the restore process.
2. The heat sink is clogged and the laptop overheats. If the laptop heat sink is clogged, the CPU overheats and it might cause the entire system to slow down. It’s very easy to check the heat sink on Toshiba Satellite P15. It is not necessary to remove the heat sink if you want to clean it up, you just have to remove the fan and clean the heat sink with compressed air.
3. The hard drive is going bad. Turn on the laptop and listen if the hard drive makes unusual noises (clicking, grinding, etc…). It’s possible that a laptop will run slow if the hard drive is bad. In this case you’ll have to replace the hard drive and reinstall the operating system. Sometimes the hard drive might be bad even if it doesn’t make any strange noises. You can test the hard drive with Hitachi Drive Fitness test.
April 20th, 2010 at 8:23 am
Navjot,
What is speed id?
April 20th, 2010 at 7:03 am
hello i have a toshiba satellite laptop and its speed id low after being having a ram of 4gb.help”
March 31st, 2010 at 6:02 pm
My Inspiron 1521 laptop one day kept freezing and having error screens and the battery died (so i wiped my computer and installed windows 7 again) but now my computer is really slow but it stopped freezing and getting error screens. I mean everything is slow i can’t even watch videos on the internet without them lagging anymore. Does anyone know what the problem might be and how i can fix my computer.
(i am suspecting a power surge and if this is the case what would of been damaged?)<- not for sure
February 20th, 2010 at 7:47 am
i have a acer aspire 5715z it dual core 1.8ghz 358bm 965gm video card and 3 gb ram my laptop boots quickly when i play a game after 30min the laptop works really slow then i shut it down and it doesent start i wait for 5 min and it starts then its does the same thing again why?
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:49 pm
I too have the same problem as #41.
Once I pull the power jack from the socket the notebook becomes *really* slow, even for normal day to day things. It’s not a power plan problem as it’s always in maximum performance, and reattaching the power jack doesn’t solve this. The only working method I’ve found is rebooting. Not even shutdown, as it always boots very slow, only rebooting gets it back to the right speed. I’ve also noticed that in Linux, when I detach the power, the screen backlight goes off and never gets on again, so it may probably be a hardware thing. It didn’t do this from the beginning, but some months later. Switching drivers (original, updated) doesn’t do anything.
September 4th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Hi all
from about 2 month, my HP HDX 9350 is very slow when i plug the ac adapter, if the nb is on (ie when i unplug ac power to change room, when i reconnect to ac, after few seconds the nb go to be very slowly, if i play a game my fps drop from 50-60 to 1-5) and to solve the problem only thing i can do is restart the system.
can be a hw problem?
May 29th, 2009 at 2:38 am
I did all those cleaning things and all–the only thing that got my laptop back to super speed (I am running Vista) was to get Visual Effects back to basic–
Go to Start>>Control Panel>> Performance Information and Tools>>Adjust Visual Effects>>Choose Best Performance.
Restart your laptop and viola!
May 18th, 2009 at 9:15 am
I have a 5 year old hp pav 5000, running xp, 3 years ago it crashed, i did all i could to save programs, at last resort i reinstalled xp rather than reformat.. now their is xp on my computer twice, most of my programs were all salvaged, and have been using this way, but now out of memory, 60gig HD only have 1gig left… runs so so slow.. and crashes a lot, i have many programs that i do not have original program discs for any more.. i dont want to loose data / or programs. i would like to reformat.. but how to save all programs and files, to external hd without getting all other problems with it, can i ?? original c: my documents i can not open which from 1st original xp install, but new c: my documents and c drive is so fragmented, basically no memory to do much more ?? need help bad… afraid to loose all..
May 8th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Regarding my Dell Inspiron 700m laptop:
I do not notice any unusual sound when my computer boots up or shuts down. Is it possible for there to be another issue or do you think because of it’s age that the hard drive is probably failing?
Thank you for your imput.
May 4th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Susan,
There could be a problem with the hard drive itself.
Listen for the sound coming from the hard drive when the laptop is booting up. Can you hear any weird grinding or clicking noises. If you can, apparently the hard drive is failing and has to be replaced. Back up all personal files ASAP until it’s too late.
May 4th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I have a Dell Inspiron 700m, it takes about 8 MINUTES to boot up. I have done: disk clean up, defrag, registry booster, registry defrag, deleted any programs I have not used in awhile & have 54% of my hard drive free. I do not understand why it takes so long to boot up – it doesn’t shut down very quickly either. What can I do to speed things up?
HELP! and THANK YOU!!
March 27th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
i have a toshiba satellite a85 s107 laptop i have 120gb hard drive and 1.12gb of ram i have this computer for about 4 years now. i have avg, spybot, ad adware, ccleaner, i run these programs once a week followed by disk cleanup and disk defragment. still with all of this my laptop is still running very slow. i am only using 10gb out of 120gb when i right click on c:drive to see how much space i am using. please help i dont know what to do anymore i tried everything.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:14 am
Asus F8 laptop question
*changed OS Vista to XP(currently using XP)
Why is my asus f8 laptop running very slow(half the normal) when im in battery mode? When im using the AC adaptor, the laptop is running normally.
Help please.
Thanks!
March 11th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
what up guy please what can i do to my dell inspiron cos whenever am using it is too slow in response and i believe something must have been wrong with so please for God sake i need a solution if were to be software problem or hardware problem i want to know.Thanks
September 20th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Hi there you can try Active Kill Disk to swipe your hard drive clean and to prepare it for a fresh installment of Windows XP or other OP systems.
But make sure you have your xp disk and product key handy and back up your files to another computer, because it will completely remove xp OP system and adware, spyware, viruses etc.
here’s the link for trial version http://www.killdisk.com/
September 1st, 2008 at 11:52 am
I have a dell latitude and have just had my motherboard changed because I cracked it. I have now had it repaired but it no longer works – my internet is extremely slow and I can’t play any videos. The man who repaired it insists that he has done nothing that could have caused these problems. Could you please advise me as to what I can do to address these problems