Re: How do I diagnose a slow Vista Home Basic machine?
- From: "Ryan" <rmagill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 22:46:39 -0500
I would almost guarantee if you up the ram it will fix the problem. I have a toshiba laptop that only had 512mb when I got it and it was extremely slow. I now have it upgraded to 2gb and it runs much faster like the difference between night and day.
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Ryan MCTS
"Saucy" <saucylemon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:O$yUJd1lJHA.3380@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"M Skabialka" <mskabialka@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:esdhDO1lJHA.2460@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxA friend found out that I have a Vista computer so he brought me his wife's computer to find out why it is so slow. I have no problems with mine but this Vista Home Basic PC is ungodly slow. Just to open an Explorer window takes over 90 seconds. I scheduled a checkdisk and ran it on the next reboot. I defragged and ran the disk cleanup wizard. I downloaded and reinstalled the ATI video drivers after seeing an eror message about ATI.
It is slightly faster but not enough to make any difference to the user.
Where do I find the diagnostics, or logs or something that can tell me what is slowing it down so that I can fix it? I couldn't find a diagnostic on the eMachine site. My last option will be to reformat and start over but I'd rather not do that if there is a way to fix it instead. It's an eMachine with only 512 MB RAM, but it did run much faster when new. Intel Pentium 3.0 GHz, 160 GB HDD. Also the wireless card is very slow, but the wired connection is pretty fast for downloading.
Mich
The computer doesn't really have enough RAM. That said:
There's more than one possible reason for a slow down. Malware ( virus, spyware etc. etc. ) is a common cause of slow down. Do a virus and spyware scans.
Another cause is that there might be too many programs running in the background. You can use msconfig to stop some of these programs from running. Requires a reboot:
Start > in the "Start Search" edit box type in "msconfig" when it appears at the top of the Start menu click on it > go to the "Startup" tab > uncheck any unneeded programs (if you aren't sure use a web search engine to discover what they are) > click any OKs > the computer will have to be rebooted for the new settings to take effect.
Note: A technician can also edit the "Run" key in the registry to stop programs from running when the computer boots up. As well, there are third party programs that can be used to 'tweak' Windows. One program in particular that focuses on "junk" programs is:
[The PC Decrapifier]
http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/home
Also note: These days, 512MB of RAM is substantially insufficient. The computer should have at least 1GB RAM for running Windows Vista and programs. The "sweet spot" is 2GB RAM. My laptop (running Vista) felt slow with 1GB of RAM. After I switch out to 2GB RAM it ran much better.
Saucy
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