Little Yoshi Posted October 24, 2011 Report Share Posted October 24, 2011 (edited) Right I have very little computer skill's. Recently my laptop has been running very slowly and out of 138 gb only 8gb's are free. I have no idea where the rest of it is. The only big program I have is Wow which is 30 odd gb but aprat from that its all normal/standard stuff. Any good free anti-virus programs or scanners to check if I caught anything? Edited October 24, 2011 by Little Yoshi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
N.Wood Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Probably gonna be some nerds who tell you other programmes are better, but no one has replied yet so I'll go ahead. Malware Bytes and Spybot search and destroy are 2 free, easy to use programmes which will hopefully help you out. Can use both together. Google them and they'll come up straight away. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeyseemonkeydo Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Also run CCleaner and Eusing Registry Cleaner. If it's still running poorly after that (and it's understandable when the HDD is fairly full) have a look in the Program Files folder and sus out where the storage is being used (unless it's in your documents by videos and pictures of course). The other thing to do is open up task manager and see if anything is using up lots of memory or CPU. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greetings Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 I could be wrong but with 8/138gb free, your disk could be getting heavily fragmented. Basically there's not enough space to save files in one piece so the big ones are being scattered around the whole drive meaning it takes ages to read them. Try running disk cleanup first, remove temporary files etc. Try to get rid of as many programs you don't use as possible. After you do that, it'd be a good idea to defragment the hard drive. I use AusLogics Disk Defrag, it's free and it's quick. +what the others said. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muel Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Delete as much shit as you can, go through the list of installed programs and uninstall any you don't use any more, then do these things in order: Run CCleaner Disc cleaner.Run CCleaner registry cleaner.Run Eusing Registry CleanerRun Defraggler. It might be a good idea to run an antivirus scan, a spyware scan and an adware scan as well. I personally never bother with any of them any more, I just reinstall Windows instead. Much better results and doesn't take that much more time/hassle once you get a routine sorted out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete.M Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 As well as doing what has already been said, I'd get an external hard drive and move as much on to it as you can. Free up space and speed should increase. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadManMike Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 It might be a good idea to run an antivirus scan, a spyware scan and an adware scan as well. I personally never bother with any of them any more, I just reinstall Windows instead. Much better results and doesn't take that much more time/hassle once you get a routine sorted out. You must have an uber minimal setup then... I have Lightroom, Photoshop, 3 or 5 games, audio editing software, music production software (Including about 20 VST plug ins I have to install), YouTube ripper, iTunes, CD Burning shiz, VDJ Program, Dreamweaver, FTP Client, VLC... It would take me 50 x longer to re-install windows and all that software than to run a couple of scans. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muel Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Nope, My C drive is over 100gb not counting my Steam setup which is 65gb+. It might be faster to run a couple of scans, but when you add in updating stuff and the amount of installing and uninstalling I do when testing stuff, it's not all that much longer if you just wipe it every 6 months. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weebryan Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 1 Save all programms and photos and videos to an external hard drive all safe no virus 2 Full destructive recovery, will reset to factory setting ie like brand new again this can be done by the recovery dvd burned by yourself or find the menu on start up, the option to do this usually F2, F8,F12 one of those just google it or do search on your computer "recovery" there will be something I have done this all the time for people with same problems , slow , programmes not running, full but no saved data the cleaners and virus checkers, defrag, disk cleaner all do ok but only temporary fixes Just wipe the computer and start again runs like new may take a while but defo worth it any probs just pm me and i can talk you throught it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke Rainbird Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Problem with that is that unless you've got the installation files it'll be pretty hard to move programmes to an external drive. Even so if there's anything corrupt/virusey in any of them or the pictures, videos etc putting them on an external drive won't do a lot of good as the problem still remains. The cleanup methods mentioned earlier in the thread will sort you out though If you do decide to give a fresh OS install and need to get a load of programmes done quickly and easily I've always found that Ninite is pretty useful for a few of the basics Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Topsy Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Temporary internet stuff might be using all that space? It's easy to get +20gb if you hardly ever clean it.. I usually use Glary Utilities to delete things like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weirdoku Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Something I always do is turn off some startup processes/programs. Type msconfig into the search box in the Start menu, hit enter. System configuration will open, under Startup tab, leave only the things that you would use when the laptop starts up. In mine I only have Peerblock, Zonealarm firewall and SRSaudio sandbox. Everything else is unchecked, this way your laptop will only start the things you've selected. This will also decrease the time your laptop takes to load everything at startup, and not loading unused programs into your RAM that's taking up space when you don't even need to use it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JT! Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 I accidentally got my laptop down to a few GB's left of free space, it barely ran. Delete some stuff and that's all you'll probably have to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Little Yoshi Posted October 26, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 26, 2011 Temporary internet stuff might be using all that space? It's easy to get +20gb if you hardly ever clean it.. I usually use Glary Utilities to delete things like that. That costs money. got the free version. Worth the 25 quid? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke Rainbird Posted October 26, 2011 Report Share Posted October 26, 2011 You're on the internet, you should be able to find alternate sources pretty easily Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Topsy Posted October 26, 2011 Report Share Posted October 26, 2011 That costs money. got the free version. Worth the 25 quid? Sorry, I've no idea which version I've got, a friend of mine gave it to me a while back.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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