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Edited Date/Time
8/26/2014 5:59pm
I bought my mother an Asus Laptop around Christmas time last year. I wanted to get her something she could enjoy and play around on, watch her soaps ect. We got an Asus that is a race horse on paper but is the slowest thing I have ever seen. It was fast at first but just slowly started creeping. For instance, 3 minutes for Chrome to come up, 5 minutes for Quickbooks, unable to watch a stream of her soaps online.
I have read where there are many people having problems with Windows 8.1 but no where can I find a solution. Do any of you have any experience, suggestions, recommendations? I really don't know what to do and I'm tired of seeing her frustrated trying to use her computer. Please help me to make my mother happy!
I have read where there are many people having problems with Windows 8.1 but no where can I find a solution. Do any of you have any experience, suggestions, recommendations? I really don't know what to do and I'm tired of seeing her frustrated trying to use her computer. Please help me to make my mother happy!
I doubt it's a hardware issue......but even though it's new , you could have some ram going bad. Possibly a HD that is starting to fail ( Are you getting any programs that are just not working any more? ). Could be a bunch of different things.....but my money is on a bunch of stuff running in the back ground.
There are thousands of dudes who are big time computer enthusiasts there and would love to help out. In fact they would probably walk you through step by step if you ask for help.
It is a possiblity that something could be running in the back ground. She does download some apps. I will google if there is a way to close them like you can on an Ipad or cell phone. That is exactly what it acts like. But after googleing I have seen where many people are having the same issue. I don't know what to do.
The Shop
check task manager or better yet, Process Explorer http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
https://www.piriform.com/CCLEANER
http://www.lavasoft.com/
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/restore-refresh-reset-pc
This is a free tool that I use and recommend to people that have slow machines.
https://www.malwarebytes.org/mwb-download/
Go to your deskptop and right click on the windows icon on the taskbar and click Run. Then type msconfig and hit enter. in System Configuration, you'll see a tab that says Startup. Click it and then click Open Task Manager. Or, even easier, just go to search and type in Task Manager! In Task Manager go to Processes and look at the graph. It will tell you what programs are running and how much cpu and memory is being used. Look fro programs that are using a lot of memory and cpu. You will also see a tab that says Startup. Click it and disable any programs that are not necessary. Most of your programs are not necessary to run at start up and you can safely disable them; any programs that are necessary will automatically be enabled by Windows. To disable a program, right click on it and click disable. for example, if you have a chat program, it will probably run at startup but you don't need it too. You can run it simply by clicking on an icon for it when you need it. Usually by getting rid of all those unnecessary programs, you can speed up your system.
Use the task manager and see whats eating up clock cycles.
Try these things in this order:
1) Download malware bytes from download.com
-It works wonders on removing spyware. Good spyware will not even let you go to the site though. If it lets you download it it's probably not spyware but if it doesn't let you then you know for sure it is. If it downloads and scans your system and doesn't find anything then it's most likely not malware or spyware
2) Reinstall operating system
3) Take to get serviced. Should still be under warranty. You could call Asus and they may send you out a replacement or return it where you bought it for another different laptop.
Hope that helps. I would have to say it's the hard drive though.
Mechanical hard disks can have an impact on performance when they become fragmented. The simple fix here is to run a defrag on the disk. A failing drive can impact performance, but it sounds like a newer machine. It could be defective.
If the laptop does have a mechanical hard disk, they're typically 5400 rpm drives in laptops for power saving reasons. It does save power, but it also is a huge bottleneck for laptops..this is the main reason why they're traditionally much slower than desktops. Luckily, solid state disks have become pretty affordable. They are both much better performing and use less power. It's a win all around.
Spyware is the number one cause of performance loss in windows machines, so if I had to speculate...I would start there.
What is the model of the laptop? If it's a low end machine, sometimes they have outdated hardware with a newer operating system installed. There could possibly be a driver issue, such as embedded graphics, or sometimes bloatware from the manufacturer causes issues. I had an ASUS laptop back in the day that had similar performance issues due to the ASUS update program that was installed by default. Of course, that was a long time ago, but I'm pointing out there are other potential causes for poor performance. However, you certainly want to start with a full spyware scan.
9 out of 10 times it's malware, trojans, viruses, etc.
Problem is even after it's clean there are files and registry entries that will never be the same. You could track every single change that the malware did but the best way is to backup your important stuff and then format it and reinstall fresh software.
Sounds time consuming but it's faster.
After a fresh install, put a pw on your admin acct and turn on guest mode and only access the Internet in guest mode. Your system files cannot be altered in guest acct.
Some know it all doucheRockets will say otherwise but it's true.
Glad to hear you got things better! Good job.
This is excellent advice and will save a lot of stuff that she doesn't realize is getting on there from being installed.
We had a similar problem with my mom when she was in her early 80's, they just don't pick up on all the additional crap.....it's meant to deceive the person looking at it.
You basically set it up the way a business network work is structured, the end users don't install software.
The "objects scanned" count has stopped at 729, 386 and it has been on "heuristic anaylusis: working" for quite a while now.
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