Suggestions for fixing laptop

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Texas Proud

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My DWs laptop is slow...


She is always complaining about the internet speed, but it is not slow.... it tests at a high enough speed almost all the time...


The issue seems to be her computer... it seems to be writing all of the stuff for the screen on the hard drive as that seems to be running constantly when you are surfing...



I am doing a memory test on it right now, so do not have all the info... but it is a Toshiba Satellite with an AMD A6 Vision processor... it was designed to play blue-ray discs so I thought it would be OK... it was when new, but seems to have slowed the last couple of years...


And NO, I do not want to buy a new one... all she does is web surf and she does most of that on her Ipad...
 
The exact model would help knowledgeable folks give you better info.

However, 2 cheap things are: switch her hd for an SSD , these days you can get a 240 GB one for about $55.

Increase her memory if it's less than 4 Gig. You can check here: Crucial US | DRAM, Solid State Drive (SSD) & Memory Upgrades
They have a scanner so you can get exactly the correct specs.
 
I had a similar problem with my laptop. I noticed after the laptop went to 'sleep', it would be very slow to wake up and from then on, the hard drive seemed to be working over time. I changed the settings so that it would not go to sleep as long as it was plugged into the wall. Since then, it's been great! Just a suggestion to give that a try if you notice the same thing.
 
What OS are you running? My Satellite 655 ended up being too slow for windows 8.1 and 10. So we put linux LXLE on it and it works great. It's my DWs primary machine.
 
Did you open the task manager to see what processes are running? Are you running a virus scan? Windows securities essentials can slow down older PCs. You can try to uncheck the enable write caching for better performance in the device manager for the hard drive.

a. Press the Windows key and the R key together to open the Run prompt and type devmgmt.msc and press enter to open the device manager.
b. In the device manager, double click the disk drives to expand it, then select the hard drive you want to disable the write caching for.
c. Click on the Polices tab. Under the upper Removal policy section, select (dot) Quick removal, or check the Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device box, and click on OK.
d. Restart the computer and check
 
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Did something happen recently to make the laptop slower? Or is this just the need for speed? :cool:
 
If it's a 7 year old laptop (which I think it is based on the description), you can probably expect some mild improvement by follow the recommendations here and in the other thread, but that's an old machine.

start shopping.
 
Texas Proud said:
all she does is web surf and she does most of that on her Ipad...
Click to expand...

If that’s all she does, I’d wipe out the hard drive and start fresh. Save any files you care about first, of course. Do you have the original install disk? That would make it a lot easier. If your not inclined, take it to a local shop. If you're inclined, you could load up a clean operating system - Linux.

I know you don’t want to buy new, but for just surfing, a chromebook would work just fine and they’re pretty cheap. Personally, I would not want to spend a lot of time figuring it out. Been there, done that. I have no patience to do that again. I’ll leave that work to Omni. She seems to have the patience of a saint and the tenacity of a pit bull.
 
timo2 said:
What OS are you running? My Satellite 655 ended up being too slow for windows 8.1 and 10. So we put linux LXLE on it and it works great. It's my DWs primary machine.
Click to expand...


It is Win 10
 
timo2 said:
What OS are you running? My Satellite 655 ended up being too slow for windows 8.1 and 10. So we put linux LXLE on it and it works great. It's my DWs primary machine.
Click to expand...

I have an older laptop that’s just sitting. How difficult is it to do this - change over to Linux? I’ve always done the reinstall.
 
It had 6GB of ram....


Model is L8750-S7332..


OK, I lied.... it is not always internet... she does photoshop and other programs on it... I was not thinking when I wrote that...



Not sure if I want to change to Linux.
 
Jerry1 said:
I have an older laptop that’s just sitting. How difficult is it to do this - change over to Linux? I’ve always done the reinstall.
Click to expand...

All you do is make an install disk and overwrite your old OS. Here is the link Revive that old PC! < The LXLE Desktop

DW is not a computer nerd like me, and all she does is use the web and check email. She has had no problem with LXLE.
 
Jerry1 said:
I have an older laptop that’s just sitting. How difficult is it to do this - change over to Linux? I’ve always done the reinstall.
Click to expand...

timo2 said:
All you do is make an install disk and overwrite your old OS. Here is the link Revive that old PC! < The LXLE Desktop

DW is not a computer nerd like me, and all she does is use the web and check email. She has had no problem with LXLE.
Click to expand...

Here's a link to the most recent LTS (Long Term Support) version of LXDE/Ubuntu:

https://lubuntu.me/

Also, the install process is super easy in a case like this where you don't care about keeping the old Windows active. You can just let it install over everything, no worries about keeping Windows bootable, which isn't normally a big deal, but does add some complications.

And other 'flavors' (I've been using Xubuntu - it's lightweight and easy for me to customize the desktop to work just the way I like it (panels, tools, and multiple 'virtual desktops' that are super easy to use and keep me organized).

https://www.ubuntu.com/download/flavours

While it doesn't seem like OP is ready to jump to Linux, it's still (as some of us mentioned in omni's thread) a good idea to learn how to boot from Linux on a thumb drive, it is a powerful debug tool. And, if OP decides to buy a new laptop, putting Linux on the old one would give him something to play with.

As far as slow computer issues in the OP, lots of good suggestions, and first I'd focus on memory usage and disk space. If an app, or just general use, is using up most of the 6 GB, you will be going out to the disk to 'swap' memory in/out, and that is thousands of times slower than direct memory access. And if the disk is near full, it's really going to slug through it.

-ERD50
 
Texas Proud said:
It had 6GB of ram....

Model is L8750-S7332..

OK, I lied.... it is not always internet... she does photoshop and other programs on it... I was not thinking when I wrote that...

Not sure if I want to change to Linux.
Click to expand...

Well if she does photoshop (actual photoshop software) then she cannot change to Linux, as it does not run on Linux (I'm not counting running the wine emulator).

Changing to an SSD would make it much faster, you can clone over her hard-drive.
 
Switching to a SSD made more of a difference than upgrading memory on several MacBook Pros I have (left the memory at the stock 4GB)
 
timo2 said:
Here are some photoshop replacements for linux. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-photoshop-alternatives-can-run-linux/

Or you can just get a new laptop.
Click to expand...

I use linux regularly, and I use GIMP on rare occasions, which can be considered close to photoshop, but operates quite differently, so it's really different software his wife would need to learn.
If she bought any plugins to photoshop, they won't move over.

If she is keen to learn a new photo editing software, then yes move over.

I keep a Windows machine to do tax software (download) as there is none for linux, and I won't do it online until there are no alternatives.
 
If you want to keep the current machine, clone over to an ssd. Make sure it is big enough so that current stuff takes up less than half on total space on the ssd. Night & day difference. Haven't used a hard drive as boot drive since 2009. Even my old machines from 2010 still rock
 
Looking at it some more, I think there is either something running that is taking up CPU time or hogging the memory....


When I looked at the processes running there was a long list and I knew almost none of them...
 
My Guess

Recent and constant upgrades of Win 10, and possibly clicking on the option Google Drive and Sync.... which wants to back up everything, and starts when the computer is turned on. This can go on for days.
FWIW...
First defrag... then download this free clean up tool, that automates, defrags, and gives easy access to programs and files that might be slowing down operation. Slim Cleaner.
https://downloads.tomsguide.com/SlimCleaner-Free,0301-33096.html


Task Manager... to see where memory is being used.
 
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Texas Proud said:
Looking at it some more, I think there is either something running that is taking up CPU time or hogging the memory....


When I looked at the processes running there was a long list and I knew almost none of them...
Click to expand...

I'm not sure that a long list means anything - I have a long list ( ~ 50, many are cryptic-to-me names) on my Linux machine. Computers have lots of processes running.

You want to look for anything taking up lots of CPU and/or lots of memory. I don't do Windows, so I can't tell you what is typical or expected, but I'd start with the top 3 of each and ask around.

-ERD50
 
Jerry1 said:
I have an older laptop that’s just sitting. How difficult is it to do this - change over to Linux? I’ve always done the reinstall.
Click to expand...

Changing over is not for everyone as some things are done differently.

That said, I read something (forget where) about Win vs Linux. Paraphrasing here: On Win, what you learned in the past tends to get changed and more confusing in the long run. On the other hand, for Linux, change doesn't happen so often. So, once learned, sticks around more.
 
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