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.
March 19th, 2008 at 3:53 am
Hi,
I am using Dell Inspiron 6000, it is getting really very slow. specially when i use internet.. I am usin IE8.
I have try to upgrade the RAm from 1gb to 1.5gb (Kingston RAM) but its still acting same way. Recenlty I have intalled Norton internet securoty 2007.
Is it an good idea to reinstall window?
please advise, awaiting for an reply…
thank you
November 18th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
J Wagner,
Are you using a correct AC adapter? I had a similar issue with one of my Dell laptops because I was using a 75Watt AC adapter instead of 90Watt adapter. The CPU started working full speed as soon as I replaced the adapter.
November 18th, 2007 at 2:21 am
I have a dell inspiron 4100. The CPU stays throttled down to 500Mhz. I have tried changing the settings in the bios and in the windows powersaving window but nothing will change it. I have checked the heat sink and cleaned it, nothing has helped. Can you help with some advice? It also has a sound problem. After a computer restart the sound will not work until after I remove the driver and reinstall the hardware. This will be good until the next restart then I must repeat the remove and reinstall. I have tried to use the backup disks to restore to factory config for both of these problems but nothing has fixed these issues. Could you email me a reply? Thanks
November 6th, 2007 at 5:31 am
hi,
This is totally random to your previous conversation but I am selling my laptop (It’s a Packard Bell Easy Note L4) and I seem to have lost all the information on it.
Would anyone know the processor speed, Hard Drive Capacity,RAM, Chip Type, Primary Drive and Screensize?
I would really appreciate a bit of help with this!
Cheers
October 14th, 2007 at 8:00 am
Hello,
K, i bought a laptop hp a year ago cost me almost 3000 so its a fairly good laptop. Recently i was having problems with it running like super slow like i mean taking 5-10 min to start up and then music would skip while playing. So i redid it(like the boot disk) 4 times in a matter of a week and it would run perfect for the first day or so then back to super slow and music skipping. I took it to future shop and they said they found spyware and removed it but that hasnt fixed the problem and they tested the hardware and say nothing is wrong. Anyone have any idea what could be wrong with and what can fix it?
Thanks
October 7th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Jas,
You can remove the hard drive from the laptop and then connect it to any other working computer using external USB enclosure or IDE connector.
October 7th, 2007 at 4:49 am
Hi there I wanted to know is there a way of backing up my files on my laptop. It was working perfectly fine yesterday and when I switched it back on later in the evening the whole operating system has slown down. When the actual laptop starts it looks fine then when it goes on to the Welcome part it takes a long time for it to load as well as everything else on the desktop, etc. I was wondering what is the best way to back up the information bearing in mind the operating system is slow?
Thanks.
August 11th, 2007 at 4:48 am
hi just wanna ask something.. i have a HP dv1000 and everything was perfectly fine.. but recently the start up is slow (takes about 5mins or so).. also, there is a crackling sound once in awhile especially during the start up at shut down… when i also listen to my itunes, sometimes the sound crackles and gurgles (something like that) especially when im doing something else in the computer (like when im typing or opening an application.) what could be wrong? Thanks!
July 14th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Hi, I am a complete novice at computers, Here is my laptop problem… I have a packard bell Easynote L4 and i know i have a lot of junk on the hard drive, It takes about 8 minutes to load the desktop and it is really slow processing things. I am thinking of buying a new laptop as this really winds me up at its slowness. Is there any step by step instructions you can give me to wipe everything off apart from my windows XP program and i can start from fresh? I can’t even load a restore point. I look forward to your reply, Kind Regards,
Steve
April 12th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Hi my laptop was so fast in the beginning. The windows XP professional bar used to run about just 3 times before it goes into the desktop. I then had a system error and had to reinstall XP. But now it looks a little slow. I have an Acer TravelMate 4150. Also I changed my RAM a few months back from 256 MB 400Mhz to 1GB 533 Mhz. Say when I click on the Internet explorer icon or my Anti virus, it used to appear instantly but now they take more time to load and more drag. I hear slight noise (very slight)from my hard disk, is it normal or should the hard disk be very silent when it is working?
March 5th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
I installed 100 gb hard drive and upgraded RAM to 1.512 all by myself on my Dell Inspiron. It worked great. Now it has gotten slower and slower. Two important facts: I dropped it out of my backpack (thought it was zipped); I have teenagers who download stuff.
Can you diagnose this problem?
February 15th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
j5,
Try calling Toshiba, I think you can purchase this DVD from them and it shouldn’t be very expensive. Some laptops come without recovery discs and they have a recovery media creator installed instead. You have to run this utility to create a set of recovery CDs or DVDs.
Go through the programs installed on our laptop and check if you have this recovery media creator installed. If you do, run it and create CDs.
February 14th, 2007 at 3:03 am
I need the recovery disc for my satellite p15-s420. Someone had mentioned to me that it was suppose to come with one but it never did. So now I want to wipe out all the crap thats been slowing it down and start fresh again. any suggestions where I can find one, besides toshiba.com?
February 11th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
sam shyayler,
If the laptop is slow on start up it’s either a software related problem or you have a failing hard disk. Test the hard disk first. You can use Hitachi’s drive fitness test and run the advanced test. If the hard disk passes the test, I would try reloading the operating system. If the hard disk fails the test, you’ll have to replace it.
February 10th, 2007 at 5:51 am
hi, i have a Advent 7104 laptop when i first had it in october 2006 it was great but after a couple of days it went really slow and it still is. its mainly slow on start up, i have to wait for my local area connection icons to appear which usely takes 3 to 4 minuites.
I do regular virus scans and updates and i dont have anything on start up or running in the background.
What should i do??? please help!
January 16th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Jonathan,
How about safe mode? Boot the notebook into safe mode and check if it’s still slow. If the notebook works fine in safe mode and very slow when you boot it normally, probably you have software related issue.
Test the hard drive. You can use Hitachi drive fitness test, the link in the post. Make sure it passes (or fails) 2-3 times.
January 16th, 2007 at 1:18 am
I received a compaq pesario v3000 last month and it worked very fast and well for a while. Suddenly today I turned it on, and logged into the administrator acccount. It took about 5 mins+for it to display the taskbar and shortcuts, and after that it just couldn’t do anything. I’ve checked the task manager, the cpu sage is only at around 3-5%. And when I tried to log off, it took another 5 mins+ for it to finish shutting down. It doesn’t display any strange noises either, please help!. Much appreciated.
January 9th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Hi there.
I´ve bought a new Toshiba A65 S126 with a Celeron 2.8GHz processor and it was much slower than I thought. I´ve installed more 512MB RAM (summing up to 768MB) and it is still very slow. Is there any possibility of upgrading the processor? Maybe it will overheat too much with a Pentium 4 2.8GHz? Thanks.
November 9th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
Wendell,
I usually use only DFT test, it’s free, reliable and fast. I used to test hard drives with Micro-scope utility, but I didn’t really like it.
November 9th, 2006 at 3:17 am
hi there..whats the other one hard drive test you have?even if its not free, ill try to have it if its useful.is windows test for hard drive a good tool?or its not as good as the DFT you mentioned.thanks
November 3rd, 2006 at 4:44 pm
Wendell,
DFT test is not so complicated and you don’t have to install anything on your laptop. You download a CD image and then burn it on a CD disk to create a bootable CD. After that you start the laptop from the CD and run the test. You can read through the user’s manual. That’s the only free utility I use, another one that I have is not free.
November 2nd, 2006 at 8:26 pm
i have mcafee 2006 and the empowering softwares of ACEr..i edited the msconfig by disabling some of the programs at start up except my antivirus and everything is fast now..windows can load around 7 secs now..about the DFT utility, it seems to be complicated and im afraid i might screw any installed programs.im not really good in computer stuffs..do you have any software for checking the hard drive condition with just simple steps for beginners like me?thank you very much for you help.i really appreciate it.:)
November 2nd, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Wendell,
I usually use Hitachi DFT utility (link to the utility in the comment 5) for testing hard drives. Download it and run an advanced test, it might take some time. If the hard drive fails the test, then probably you have a bad drive. If it passes the test, then your might have a software related problem.
Do you have any antivirus or anti spyware software witch start scanning computer on each start up? They might take a lot of laptop resources and slow down the start up process. It’s just a guess.
November 2nd, 2006 at 5:37 am
ammm i think its from the hard drive but its very very minute sound.i can barely hear it but its there.i can only hear it when im scanning my lappy at dawn.i took it to the service center but they dont hear anything.have any idea what it is?whats the best way to check if the hard drive is working properly?..the LED is located beside the hard drive.
October 30th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
Wendell,
If you loaded a lot of software then 1 minute is a good result. I have a fast HP laptop, but it’s overloaded with software. It takes over 2 minutes to boot it to the desktop.
Yes, it is normal.
Are you sure that the crackling sound comes from the LED and not from the hard drive? Listen in the hard drive area and let me know.
October 30th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
Lisa,
Can you hear any strange sounds coming from the hard rive (grinding sound, clicking sound, etc…) or it sounds normal? If it sounds strange, it’s possible that the hard rive is failing. Just in case back up all important personal files as soon as possible because it might fail any time. You can use free Hitachi drive fitness test utility to test the hard drive (run advanced test). Let me know how it goes.
October 29th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
hi there..i just bought my Acer Aspire 5500Z 7 months ago.first it was ok until recently i had problems during start-up.its very slow and would take more than 1 minute to reach the windows desktop icons.i brought it to the store where i bought it and they tried everything.after 3 days it was fine.they said they reformatted it.days after installing my files and programs again, booting starts to slow up especially when loading windows XP (professional edition)..so i brought it to Acer service center.after 5 days it was ok and he said that my msconfig is flooded..then after i added my files and programs again, it was starting to slow up again.is there something wrong with my hardrive or its just normal to have a slow start-up when you add more and more programs?.by the way, is it normal for the LED light of the laptop to have crackling sound?..i hope you can advice me what to do..thank you.
October 28th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
I have an HP pavilion dv 1000, and all of a sudden it won’t load entirely bc it’s going so slow. It was working fine earlier today, and I shut it off normally. And I just turned it on, and it wouldn’t load everything on the desktop, so i rebooted in safe mode, now it loads everything, but its soooo slow. I dont know what the porblem it. help!
October 19th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
If the laptop starts acting slow (boots slow, responding slow, etc…) then it could be a software related issue. Check if you have too many applications running on the background, remove all unnecessary application. The laptop also could be infected with a virus, spyware, adware. Scan the laptop. If it doesn’t help, back up all personal data and run a restore CD or DVD to re-image the drive back to original state. For people who don’t know how to fight malicious software or tune up the operating system, re-imaging the drive would be the best option. NOTE: do not forget to back up personal data before you start the restore process, the hard drive will be erased and all personal data lost.
It also could be related to a hard drive failure. Turn on the laptop and listen in the hard drive area. Do you hear any strange repetitive sounds like grinding or clicking? Is the laptop unusually hot in the hard drive area? If yes, then you might have a failing hard drive and you’ll have to replace it. Run Hitachi DFT test to confirm that the hard drive is failing.
October 19th, 2006 at 8:50 am
my laptop boots slowly, act slowly. all this nonsense just gotten into it how can i get it on fast