PC RUNNING VERY SLOW

[airfieldops]

I visited a freind christmas day and he asked me to check his pc as it was running slow , : everything was running slow , start up, internet; viewing photos etc he had some anti virus software installed and running , i checked that and nothing was apparent: he told me that he had tried running defrag and that made no diffrence, I checked the C drive capacity and that had loads of room left, not sure what else to tell him, any answers out there


Dave o

[VHG]

Could he perhaps have 2 (or more) anti virus products running. This can slow a PC down.

If he has a lot of programs running, and he is low on memory, that could slow a computer down.

Or he may have spyware / malware so he need to run malwarebytes.

[Buenchico]

Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to enter the Windows Task Manager. Click the 'Processes' tab. You should find a high figure (perhaps 80+ or 90+) against 'System Idle Process' , with everything else showing either '00' or a very low figure. If there's a program (other than System Idle Process) showing a very high figure it means that it's hogging all of the PC's processing power. (What you need to do about it will depend upon what it is. Post again if you're unsure).

Also go to Start>Run and type 'msconfig' (without the quote marks) into the box. Click 'OK' and then on the 'Startup' tab. There you'll see a list of every program which runs automatically whenever the PC is booted. Click to remove the ticks alongside anything not required. Click 'Apply' and 'OK'. Restart the computer. When you see a box stating that the computer is using 'Selective Startup Mode', click to put a tick in 'Do not show this message again'.

Chris

[TTG]

In addition to vhg and Buenchico's very useful posts.

Have a look at the services tab in msconfig. Search on net to see if you can safely untick it.

Download, install and update malwarebytes. Restart in safe mode and run it.

[galeck1947]

Download and run Glary Utilities it will clean up the pc and the latest version has a startup manager to check and manage your startup programs as one of the attached modules. It is free. Also download and run Auslogics Disc Defrag and get to defrag and optimise the hard drive it is a better program than the Windows one and is also free.A malware and virus check wouldn't hurt to run as well.Use MalwareBytes and the installed antivirus program

[airfieldops]

tried buenchico first and second suggestion everything had very low figures except system idle process as expected in high 80,s

tried yhe msconfig run idea and startup tab did show a few things but nothing ouy of the ordinary