my computer and me arent the best of friends right now. lately its been running super slow and sometimes wont even load a page at all. i always have signal and everything, but it just runs sososo slow. im thinking it might have a virus but i dont know what virus software is good and i dont have any money to buy it anyway, so my question is, is there something i can do or something i can download to get get this thing running at a decent speed or something??
What kind of computer, how old is it, what are it's specs, what OS (XP, vista, 7?) Give it a little clean will help with speed, download: CCleaner - Optimization and Cleaning - Free Download Once isntalled, opened, Analyze > Run cleaner (make note of how much it removes and post here) Then in it, click the Registry icon, and Scan for issues > Fix all selected issues > Yes > Save > Fix all selected issues (make note and post how many it fixed) Next remove viruses, run this in quick scan: Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware Free Download and Reviews - Fileforum Then defragment your harddrive, (Need to know your OS to say how, but you can probably just google it)
its an acer laptop, its about a year old, and i wont even lie...i dunno the specs. im not great with computers haha. but i might be trying this. thanks!
definitely gotta clean up your Pc. up above got you covered. and if you want to find out your specs: hit.. start//run// then type "dxdiag" it should give you your full specs.
You should actually be running a full scan as quickscan only searches recently used/downlaoded files. Always run a thorough virus scan.
The best free Anti-Virus is Microsoft Security Essentials, available on Microsoft's website: Microsoft Corporation: Software, Smartphones, Online, Games, Cloud Computing, IT Business Technology, Downloads
AVG Free edition and Spybot Search and Destroy are the programs to have, both are free. Also restart it if you have'nt done so in the past 2 days.
I'd avoid the registry cleaners. CCleaner is amazing as a third party recycle bin, but you don't want to start messing with your registry files. So leave that aspect alone. I don't know where Falcon is, but I remember him posting somethings on why messing with registry cleaners was a bad idea. Also, how many processes do you have running? If you don't know how to check already, ctrl+a l t+delete. Then you click processes. If you have a lot (over 55 or so), start ending the processes you don't need. Lastly, open up msconfig. If you have windows seven, you can just type it into the search bar in your start menu. If you don't, hit the windows key+R. It'll open up a run menu that you can type msconfig into. Click the services tab and click the box that says "Hide all windows services" then unclick everything you see that you don't need. If you don't know, look it up on google quickly, but I'm sure most of it you don't need. Then click the start up tab, and unclick everything you don't want or need to start up every time you turn on your computer. From there, restart, your computer and you should see a lot less processes running. This will free up your processor/RAM and should give you some extra speed as well. Edit: a-l-t is spaced the way it is because GC automatically blocks it for some reason...But it's the key right next to the windows key.
Misinformation in this thread... Microsoft Security Essentials is a horrible AV. Better choices would be Avast, or AVG. Or if you can get Eset Nod32 or the whole Eset security set. Defrag your hard drive, it'll definitely help Tweaking your registry manually will help you out, but the registry is no longer loaded by XP and up so if you use a registry cleaner it won't help much. I've never had any problems with CCleaner though, although others have (I'm referring to its reg cleaner function, its regular cleaning and other uses are great.) Malwarebytes or Spybot are both good malware cleaners and won't interfere with your other antivirus. Do full scans. If you haven't already, stop using Internet Explorer. Firefox, Chrome, Opera, anything but IE. Personally I'd recommend the switch to Linux, although its not for everyone but Ubuntu could let you see what you're missing. Security, speed, etc.
What's wrong with MSE if you mind me asking? It has a better detection rate that AVG, it's much less of a resource hog than AVG, and it has an incredibly easy interface. I've heard great things about Avast, but I actually quit using AVG and made the switch over to MSE. Mainly because with each update it doesn't get worse like AVG did. Not that I'm saying AVG is bad, only that it's gotten significantly worse over time.
AVG could be horrible by now then, I haven't used it in a while but it was decent ~3 years ago, but then again thats also when it was probably the most popular free AV. I don't have a super powerful computer and I've never had problems with Avast. As for MSE, first of all I wouldn't trust my security with Microsoft, I can admit they make a great OS (I'm a linux/bsd fanboy tbh) but its full of security holes. There is a problem I (and others) have noticed, that the process MsMpEng.exe tends to max out CPU's and cause the computer to freeze. It does have a very good known malware detection rate, and a pretty good adware detection rate. However, it doesn't (or at least didn't when I tested) have any heuristic technology to identify malware that isn't identified yet. I find this malware to be especially dangerous, because it is usually of higher quality than the shitty virii spread on p2p networks and the like. I've heard in reviews that it doesn't always remove all executable pieces of the malware even if it does detect them, but I don't have the time to test that for myself so I'll leave that as a rumor. I think I saw it on Security Watch though. And for the record I do agree about AVG, my brother had it on his laptop but I switched him to Eset Smart Security because I couldn't stand it. My opinion is that the Eset products are the best, they'r extremely lightweight and accurate. Wow thats like a page why did I spend so much time that probably could have been condensed to like a paragraph or two.
Definitely. 3 years ago, I would have never questioned AVG. It was solid. I didn't switch until late last year/early this year. My computer has enough resources to handle it, but I just thought it was a waste. Why use up more than I need to to do what something else can. MSE probably isn't the best. However, if you're smart enough to avoid viruses and the like, it's great. It just gives you a little more confidence that perhaps if you missed something, it didn't. Also, I love Linux. For a while I used to run Ubuntu. I can't remember the exact version, I think 9 though. Sounds about right for the time frame. However, that is before I built a computer I planned to game on. I tried to keep Ubuntu around as long as possible, but ended up getting rid of it because Wine and other emulators just didn't allow me to game like I wanted to. If you're not a big gamer though, it's fantastic. Oh, and because you use linux, do you know if they've come up with a way to use Netflix yet? With the last release (10.04) and moonlight (replacement for silverlight) it still wasn't possible. Just curious if it is now.
Linux was fun. I took a class for it in high school. Forgot everything that I learned other than the fact that is has a Gooey interface. Somehow I passed with an A.
I hate the Netflix problem, its not as bad with xbox live having netflix or the wireless enabled tv's/tv recievers, but definitely irritates me. I know running Windows in a virtual machine works. but thats too much work just to watch a movie. Some people got WINE to work but its not supported. Damn DRM. It's GUI, and so does Windows, and Macs. It's just a graphical user interface
Yeah, definitely too much work. Maybe I should just put Ubuntu on a flash drive and run it that way. So then when I'm done with it, the switch back to windows is even easier than doing a partition.