Great Commercial

[Techno]

I'm beginning to think that the computer itself is more than a tad tired and old now.

I do Defragment it every couple of days.....(It tells me I have 60% + 'free space'.....So it's not 'full' is it ?)
BUT .....I'll have to check the browser (Firefox)...though I thought it was up to date.....Ditto Flashplayer....(Though that one I'm not so convinced about....Last time I updated that, I'm not sure that worked properly. ....It said it had downloaded.....but after 'running' it I think it stayed on the previous version.

I've got a 'cleaner' (Uniblue) which seems to find and clean garbage out every couple of days.

It seems to work fine a lot of the time.....But other times, it's a case of "FFS....Get a move on !!"

Thanks for the input anyway guys !!

Cheers - Phil.

[sebigboss79]

FFS? I seem to ahve the same configuration on my PC Phil

Just to be clear it is less than 2 months old and speedy enough but the occasional WTF moment is built in I guess....

[barbarian]

You really don't need to defragment that often !

[fred.]

You really should only need to defragment every six months or so - probably not even then on a newish machine with lots of disk space. If you have 60% free disk space I wouldn't bother.
I actually can't remember the last time I ran a manual defragment on one of my PCs.

One of the biggest causes of slow downs is various programs you have running in the background - often installers of one bit of software (or hardware) will install lots of stuff in that is allegedly 'useful' to you. It very rarely is - but determining exactly what you can get rid of or not is generally not straight forward.

Another big cause of slowdowns in Anti Virus software, it is forever running scans, getting updates etc. But its usually better to have than not have it.

A lot of the 'cleaner' software is pretty paranoid and will suggest stuff to clean that is totally innocuous from a performance point of view - such as website cookies - that at worst provide feedback to advertisers, to target you with adverts, but this is just annoying marketing junk, not actually an issue with the machine running slowly.

How old is the PC, and approximately how much did it cost new?

Personally I use an iMac at home running OS X, and it is a world better than the reasonably high spec PC I use at work running windows XP. I am supposed to be getting a newer PC with Windows 7 soon - so it will be interesting to see if that is any better.

[nikharwood]

Personally I use an iMac at home running OS X, and it is a world better than the reasonably high spec PC I use at work running windows XP. I am supposed to be getting a newer PC with Windows 7 soon - so it will be interesting to see if that is any better.

Forbes, you know it won't be 

[Techno]

One of the biggest causes of slow downs is various programs you have running in the background - often installers of one bit of software (or hardware) will install lots of stuff in that is allegedly 'useful' to you. It very rarely is - but determining exactly what you can get rid of or not is generally not straight forward.
Another big cause of slowdowns in Anti Virus software, it is forever running scans, getting updates etc. But its usually better to have than not have it.
How old is the PC, and approximately how much did it cost new?
Personally I use an iMac at home running OS X, and it is a world better than the reasonably high spec PC I use at work running windows XP. I am supposed to be getting a newer PC with Windows 7 soon - so it will be interesting to see if that is any better.

Well ...it certainly seems a LOT slower since Norton upgraded their particular product the last time.
A short e'mail coming into outlook express used to zip through in fraction (?) of a second.

Nowadays, even the shortest, one line, 'mail acts as though it's got a massive attachment.....If there is an attachment, it's as though someone's sending me a long video file to look at.....even if it's just a single reference piccy of a few Kb.

I expect more than half the problem IS the age of the PC......It must be 6 or 7 years old now.
A friend built it from scratch with what were then (I believe) top notch components.....I think he just charged me for the parts themselves....around £300 from memory.

What I find hard to understand is that once I'm on the net......a fair amount of the time I can zip from page to page really quickly....Other times.....Good grief it's slow.

As long as it last until then, I'm planning on replacing/upgrading it when Mrs Techno gets her works pension in just over a years time.

Thanks again !

Cheers - Phil.

[fred.]

I expect more than half the problem IS the age of the PC......It must be 6 or 7 years old now.
A friend built it from scratch with what were then (I believe) top notch components.....I think he just charged me for the parts themselves....around £300 from memory.

The age will be the problem - the processor will be fairly slow, and there won't be enough RAM (by today's standards) - its the lack of RAM that generally has the biggest impact, as the computer spends loads of time swapping stuff back and forwards off the disk.

If you are thinking of a new one in a year of so, I would persevere.
But don't both defragging very often, and don't run a cleaner tool more than once a month.

[fred.]

Forbes, you know it won't be 

My hopes are mainly based on the fact that my colleague got his PC replaced a few weeks ago, and the performance benefits were so big I was able to justify a new one for myself to the management.

I do know that Win7 will be an arse while I get used to where everything has moved to.

[OldenBUA]

Well ...it certainly seems a LOT slower since Norton upgraded their particular product the last time.
A short e'mail coming into outlook express used to zip through in fraction (?) of a second.

Nowadays, even the shortest, one line, 'mail acts as though it's got a massive attachment.....If there is an attachment, it's as though someone's sending me a long video file to look at.....even if it's just a single reference piccy of a few Kb.

This sounds like Norton is now doing a virus check on incoming mail, where before it didn't? Maybe something you might want to look into. Mind you, virus checking mail isn't a bad thing, but maybe you can change some of the settings to speed things up?

[Fenton]

I got rid of Norton and went to AVG, then AVG 2013 came out which just seemed to wreck everything, now using ad-aware which seems to pick up stuff neither of the other 2 ever did

[Techno]

Thanks again chaps !!

Well......I know my Adobe Flash Player is well out of date now. (I've got something like version 10.2....New version sees to be 11.8 etc)
This rings a bell, as I seem to remember I gave up in frustration trying to get a new version to work a while ago.

I've (apparently) successfully downloaded to latest version on two occasions today.
Attempt one ended with a screen telling me it was initializing the new version.....This stopped at 50% with "Failed to initialize."
Attempt two.....ended with a note saying there was a fault on "line such and such"....and it never got round to trying to initialize this new version.

I'll give it one more go, then give up for now.

I'm sure I'll be doing something wrong that's so sodding obvious and basic, that I just can't see what it is.
Wish me luck !!

Yep....I'm sure Norton is now 'checking' everything coming into Outlook E......There's a little Norton symbol there now, that wasn't there before the 'upgrade'.

Cheers - Mr Hopelessl.


Just had go number 3.....Got a tiny bit further, then got a message "Encountered Error....'Action list not found'
Think that's more than enough mucking about for today......Bah ! Humbug !

[sebigboss79]

Well ...it certainly seems a LOT slower since Norton upgraded their particular product the last time.
A short e'mail coming into outlook express used to zip through in fraction (?) of a second.

Nowadays, even the shortest, one line, 'mail acts as though it's got a massive attachment.....If there is an attachment, it's as though someone's sending me a long video file to look at.....even if it's just a single reference piccy of a few Kb.

I expect more than half the problem IS the age of the PC......It must be 6 or 7 years old now.
A friend built it from scratch with what were then (I believe) top notch components.....I think he just charged me for the parts themselves....around £300 from memory.

What I find hard to understand is that once I'm on the net......a fair amount of the time I can zip from page to page really quickly....Other times.....Good grief it's slow.

As long as it last until then, I'm planning on replacing/upgrading it when Mrs Techno gets her works pension in just over a years time.

Thanks again !

Cheers - Phil.

I just scratchbuilt mine for about 350 not including a new screen (20'').

Win7 is an OK system but looses to XP any day. Don't go down to Win8 

The defraementation is not to release disk space (thats what removing temps and the like does). Defrag collects all bits of a file and puts them in ONE physical location on the HD. New SSD drives do not need defragementing at all but any mechanical one does. You can imagine it slows enourmously if the file manager needs to find little bits of data in gazillions of locations.

Norton? Phil, remove that bollocks and get Avira. It is free and currently the best scanner just short of AVG (which will cost you). You are correct that Virus scanners slow the PC quite a bit.

For the Adobe issue: Uninstall, Ccleaner (or what u have), registry cleaning (with ccleaner or your tool), reboot, re-install adobe.

But be aware the current version crashes frequently .