Windows Vista laptop running reallllly slow

[Proinsias]

Hi all,

Went round to see my aunt & sort out her AVG antivirus which was asking for payment, switched it back to free for her and all is well on that front.

The laptop is however running painfully slowly and seems to be clogged up with rubbish. I said if I can steal it for a few days this week I'll try to get it running a bit more smoothly. It's running Vista, which grates my soul, and she's not got the install disks anymore so I think a fresh install is out. The machine seems decent enough, £800 worth of pink Sony Viao bought about a year ago.

Current thinking is to partition off some of the drive, stick ubuntu on it and hope she takes to it - she's wanting email, browser, basic photo/video solution & Skype which from what I gather now runs on linux but I've not tried it.

On the Vista front, any suggestions for cleaning it out and speeding it up? I've heard AVG is a little bloated these days so might replace that and there looks to be a lot of start up programs which can go but is there any simple tips or nifty programs to help slim down a bloated Vista?

 

[morganjg]

I am very familiar with Vista x64 as I have been using it consistently for the last few years. I am also in technology, so I am very keen to keeping up with maintenance such as defragmentation, monitoring what is installed and what programs are memory intensive, and doing regular backups and virus scans. That being said, Vista will always be painfully slow not matter what. My Vista laptop is using less than 40% of the maximum HD storage, running minimal memory intensive programs, and still manages to lock up on the regular. And forget shutting it down regularly as it takes forever and two days to reboot. I recently acquired a Windows 7 x64 machine with similar or downgraded specs and it is night and day. Perhaps running Ubuntu or upgrading to Windows 7 will be a better solution than reloading a buggy OS.

 

[bakerbarber]

Look to Sony for drivers and such and upgrade to Windows 7.

Microsoft Security Essentials is free and has a much smaller footprint than AVG.

I have a Sony laptop that came with Vista and upgraded it to Windows 7, but some of the keys no longer work. Only the volume and media keys like pause and play. Nothing that the thing needs to function.

Clean install and call it a day.

There's probably so much junk and registry errors that between UAC popups and rebooting you'd waste more time trying to clean it up than you would spend reformatting it.

There may be a hard drive partition with the restore on it. Check in the boot menu first. There is a key combination to access Sony's boot sector. Check the HD in explorer and see if there is a small partition. You may be able to do a reformat from there, but it will still be Vista.

Sony has nice hardware, but if you change the OS you need to make sure you get the right drivers from them first.

 

[Graybeard57]

Vista? You've got to convince your aunt to get a new laptop. There are plenty that are pretty cheap. Hope it all works out.

 

[Proinsias]

Thanks guys.

Will have a look for an inbuilt restore, never thought of that. I think I'll go with an ubuntu, or something similar, dualboot regardless and hope she takes to it, and it takes to the Sony. For the vista side, failing a clean install I'll go with MSE in place of AVG and do a quick clean up - not going to waste a lot of time trying to speed up what may be a lost cause.

Graybeard: She's had her eye on a macbook/powerbook for a while but was hoping she might be able to eek another year or so out of this one. 12 months & £800 is pretty grim, was hoping I could buy her a little more time......I've got a 5 year old beat up cheapo laptop & an 11 year old powermac that breeze through the sort of stuff she's wanting to accomplish on her Sony Vaio.

 

[Nick Danger]

In addition to switching from AVG to Microsoft Security Essentials, as Bakerbarber suggested, I'd install CCleaner to get rid of junk like old log and cache files and other stuff that might be cluttering up her system:

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

Great free program. Been running it for years. No adware or other worries with it.

Nick

 

[rearviewmirror]

You want to get rid of Vista. That is the problem. It uses almost twice the RAM of Windows 7.
In terms of security, MSE and Malwarebytes Anti-malware are the only 2 things I use, and were recommended to be my our network security engineer as it's all he uses at home as well.

 

[bobki]

The free version of Advanced System Care should help speed up/tidy up the laptop and Panda Cloud AV is a pretty lightweight Anti Virus Package.

 

[njpaddy]

I did my daughter's desktop last summer. I had a similar problem in that she did not have the XP Pro disk to reinstall. Beside the fact that her antivirus had been expired for 6 months, she had downloaded some coupon programs that messed it up. The first thing I did was pull the hard drive, connect it to my pc and backup her and her kids, documents, pictures and music files. Then I put it back in her pc and ran the following programs (not sure of the order since all had to be run multiple times):
- uninstalled several expired antivirus programs, any programs she didn't use and her "free" coupon and coupon printing programs
- installed and ran ccleaner (I avoided using the registry cleaner since I didn't have the Windows disk)
- installed and ran Superantispyware and Malwarebytes
- installed and ran the free AVG
- defrag
- manually edited the Registry to remove fragments of the coupon programs causing much of her problem

After I got it running pretty decent, my other daughter's husband (in IT) ran some diagnostic programs on the HD and found some bad sectors. He used some software he had to copy the operating sys and all the data to another HD. We eventually got it running pretty good, but I'm afraid to ask her if she's keeping the AVG updated and running ccleaner like I told her. When I first got it, I had to take it outside and blow out all the dust and dog hair. So much hair and dust came out of her case that I had to use a leaf blower to clean my patio when I was done.

 

[Fortitudo Dei]

....I - installed and ran the free AVG...
.

I'd like to reinforce what others have said regarding AVG based on my recent experiences.
For many years AVG ruled the roost in terms of being one of the best free anti-virus options there was. Before AVG (1990s and early 2000's) most people ended up with Norton or McAfee as they managed to insert their trial versions into just about every new desktop PC being sold. AVG was a great freebie when it was released and it was soon adopted by millions of PC users. Microsoft's own anti-virus software didn't have a good reputation at the time so AVG really started to dominate and I remember how just about every email I received from friends around the world had a "virus-free - checked by AVG" type signature at the bottom of it.
Well things have changed. AVG has become increasingly bloated and now really starts to hog the resources of older computers (computers running XP and Vista are particularly prone to this). If you run a CCleaner clean-up when you have AVG, you will often find that it will clear out close to 100MB of "back-up" files left behind from an AVG scan (this always comes towards the end of the ccleaner scan, at around the 95% mark). Meanwhile Microsoft's free virus scanner (MS Security Essentials) has improved beyond measure. I've never been a huge MS fan but I have to say that Security Essentials is fast, lean, is much more effective in terms of blocking virus's than it used to be and is a far better option if you are running an older OS.

 

[California Cajun]

Hi all,

Went round to see my aunt & sort out her AVG antivirus which was asking for payment, switched it back to free for her and all is well on that front.

The laptop is however running painfully slowly and seems to be clogged up with rubbish. I said if I can steal it for a few days this week I'll try to get it running a bit more smoothly. It's running Vista, which grates my soul, and she's not got the install disks anymore so I think a fresh install is out. The machine seems decent enough, £800 worth of pink Sony Viao bought about a year ago.

Current thinking is to partition off some of the drive, stick ubuntu on it and hope she takes to it - she's wanting email, browser, basic photo/video solution & Skype which from what I gather now runs on linux but I've not tried it.

On the Vista front, any suggestions for cleaning it out and speeding it up? I've heard AVG is a little bloated these days so might replace that and there looks to be a lot of start up programs which can go but is there any simple tips or nifty programs to help slim down a bloated Vista?

Go online and get a free program called CCleaner. That gets rid of the temporary files that accumulates when you go to sites.

Then go to Start, Run, type cmd and you'll get a DOS screen. Type chkdsk /r and that will look for and repair problems with your hard drive. It will ask if you want to run this program the next time you restart the computer. Enter Y and restart the PC. It may take a couple of hours, or longer if it finds problems.

Then go to Start, Run, and type msconfig. Under the Startup tab, uncheck everything except AntiVirus programs. You don't delete anything by doing this. You keep programs that you aren't presently using from running behind the scenes.

If those things don't help, you may have a virus or hard drive damage.

 

[blary54]

+1 on CCleaner, Malwarebytes, and MS Security Essentials. All free...all good programs.
I also like to use ATF Cleaner. A free program found here: http://www.atribune.org/ Scroll down on the page and click ATF cleaner. Its a quick temp windows cleaner that you don't need to install on your computer to run.

 

[Proinsias]

Great stuff guys, thanks again. Picking it up tomorrow night so there may be more questions on the way but looks like I've got the basics of a decent plan. chkdsk is a good idea, I've heard Vista can wreak havoc on hard drives. Honestly hoping the linux install goes well and she takes to it, but I'll try to buff and shine Vista too, failing that we'll discuss a windows upgrade or a trip to the Apple shop.

Silly questions may follow, I spent a good few minutes just looking for the add/remove programs the other night. The more I'm recruited to fix stuff on Vista machines the more I find myself saying: "What were they thinking!". XP was solid, dependable and like lightning in comparison.

 

[Member357]

I've had good results with CCleaner and Advanced system care free, as others have suggested. I would definitely think about making it a dual boot, Ubuntu or my preference would be Mint, which has become sleeker as much as Ubuntu has become more bloated in recent years (IMHO). Whichever you put on will seem like lightning to her compared to Vista though.

 

[unclezillion]

I would go for Linux mint rather than Ubuntu as it is a little more user friendly for beginners in my opinion.
Ubuntu is a copy of Debian with additions and Linux Mint is a copy of Ubuntu with additions for the unaware.
unless you are into gaming in a big way there is absolutely no need to use windows.
Linux is quicker, more secure and 100% free.
I have not used windows for years and use Firefox as a browser, use skype, vlc to watch videos, etc etc
Linuxcan be run from a disc or thumb drive without install if you want to check it out or installed on your pc.
It would be wise to start with one of the bigger distributions like Ubuntu, Linux mint, Fedora as they all have huge communities behind them
and help is easily available.

 

[Proinsias]

I've not used Mint for a while but it had crossed my mind. Ubuntu was my first thought as I was thinking it might be the most user friendly for someone coming from vista/xp and the most likely to 'just work' with the Sony but I'm open to suggestions and will keep Mint in mind.

My current plan is to sell linux by putting rolling pictures of her grandson as the desktop background and hoping the joy of his little face will be enough to get by the fact that there is no longer a start button on the bottom left of the screen. It's not a fail safe plan I admit so I'll be doing what I can with the tips above to clean up Vista too.....

 

[Proinsias]

Unclezillion:
Hmmm, maybe Mint would be better then, I'm looking for an easy transition here. I had considered puppy or one of the other thumb drive distros but I think something a little more polished will help her and not burden the machine.

 

[unclezillion]

there is a new mint distro out linux mint 14. many of the other distros had major ipv6 problems so it would be worth checking this out first. 13 is fine