A Couple Of Stupid Computer Questions

General Questions
#1

I have a 4 year old HP Pavillion PC. It’s becoming very bloated and slow- the memory is 90-something percent full. I’m not sure what will happen when it reaches 100 percent, but I don’t want to find out. I do run spyware checks and whatnot regularly, I just have a lot of programs and pictures, I guess. What would happen if I did a factory restore thing? Would it be just like a new computer, and I could start all over with it? My oldest son says no, but he didn’t tell me why not. Depending on the advice I may or may not get here, I will go through the sticky about slow computers, but I’m sure I do most of the recommended stuff already.

Also, every morning when I turn my computer on from it’s sleep mode, it gets hung up and very slow and this box pop ups that says something about unresponsive script and do I want to stop it or continue it, or something to that effect. Sometimes it resolves fairly quickly, but sometimes it can take a half an hour or more. It’s usually on gmail when it does that, but has done it on other pages, as well, and it can happen at random times during the day, but always at startup. What’s up with that? My son just says I broke it. My son is a smartass.

Help!

#2

I think you should perhaps cut your hard drive usage down to 75%, somehow. I had a Pavilion, & I tried putting a second hard drive in it, but you should check with someone who knows what they’re doing. (I later ended up shorting out that motherboard & lost a lot of stuff.)

#3

I don’t know how your HP Pavilion is set up, but I have a couple of laptops that if you do a factory restore on them, it restores the disk to exactly how it was shipped from the factory. Note that this means that you permanently lose any personal things that were on the disk. If you’ve got this type of factory restore, you’ll need to dump anything you want to save to a backup disk of some sort. I keep an external drive just to back up these sorts of things.

This page should help you with your unresponsive script problem.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Unresponsive_Script_Warning

#4

One thing. Don’t leave your computer in sleep mode all the time. Applications will allocate memory for various tasks and forget to put the memory back in the free pool when they are done. This is called leaking memory. You should reboot your computer once a week to recover this ‘lost’ memory.

Also go to the command line and run msconfig and go to the startup tab. Most computers have some programs that aren’t necessary and can clog up your computer. When I look at some newbie’s computer there are usually a half dozen programs they don’t need.

Worst case, you may need to back up all your data files and restore your computer back to it’s factory settings.

#5

Some good advice here. It’ll be nice to stop the script thing, for sure. And I will be sure to reboot the computer to get back the leaky memory. It’s so embarrassing, because I’ve had computers since the early 90’s, when the internet was just words and no graphics! but I don’t know how to go to the command line and stuff like that. Don’t judge me- you don’t know me, you don’t know my life! haha But I will have to bribe my son to come over and either clean it up or do the backup and factory restore if that’s what it comes down to. Thanks!

#6

I see this advice often, so I guess it’s good advice, but whenever I’ve tried it, there are all kind of things listed, and I have no idea which ones are important and which I can get rid of.

#7

Download Soluto and install it. It’s free for now. It will tell you everything that loads, what it’s for, how many seconds it takes to load, and whether or not it’s okay to delay it or stop it from loading. You’ll finally know what all the mscong startup programs are. You can always uninstall Soluto after you get your system squared away. I reduced the length of time it takes my computer to load considerably.

#8

Any program you don’t recognize, type the name in Google. There are plenty of sites like www.processlibrary.com that will explain what the program does and if you can disable it safely.

#9

Hey, thanks! I will do this tomorrow.

#10

I’ve done this sort of thing before. There are 20, 30, or more processes, and you have to enter each of them one at a time, then try to figure out from the information if you can stop it or not. It’s often not obvious if I need it or not, and I can spend 10 to20 minutes on a singe item and still not be sure.

Soluto might be a good solution.

#11

Pretty much, the factory restore will return the computer to its ‘out of the box condition’. You can either do a complete restore or one where it backs up your files first (if your restore supports it). It’s best not to risk it and do a manual backup yourself, that way you know everything you need will be kept. The computer still won’t be as fast as it was when it was brand new, they do tend to ‘fatigue’ over time and slow down but it will likely be a big improvement.

The msconfig advice is probably your best bet for a one-stop way to improve speed without re-installing Windows. Computer novices tend to be a bit too cautious when doing this and don’t see the best improvements. Remember that anything you switch off can be turned back on just as easily so be as ruthless as you like. A good start would be to go into ‘Services’, click to hide all Microsoft services and then disable all services remaining, then disable all entries under the startup tab. After that see if you can find your antivirus application and turn that one back on. That should give you a decent improvement in speed (remember nothing you do here is permanent, you can turn anything back on that you need to so don’t be scared!!).

#12

Just had a look at Soluto to see what it does, the program itself seems pretty good though the interface is horrific in my opinion. Not too sure about the advice it gives because my laptop has very little running on it to begin with but everything it recommended was correct.

#13

Wow!
I’d love to be in front of your computer. I might first off-load some of the extra pictures and video to CDs or DVDs. I’d run CCleaner and a bunch of other registry cleaners. I’d eliminate duplicate files and extra programs. Chances are I’d cut the hard drive use to under 40%. If the computer was low on RAM, I’d buy some cheaply online to max out the computer’s capabilities. I would also run a bunch of malware programs to eliminate that possibility. Defrag the hard drive after all this.

In the end, for no money except the new memory, you would wake up to a new computer.

Also, if you keep your computer running and sleeping and never reboot, you can lose memory to leaks so restarting daily is a good thing.

#14

I like the interface. It’s probably geared towards newbies. It’s just a start, though. There’s likely a lot of stuff that needs to be cleared from her computer, as everyone is recommending.

One idea: Windows Security Essentials slowed one of my computers to a crawl and I had to remove it. If you’ve got it, try uninstalling it. You can always reinstall it if it’s not an issue. Other antivirus/security programs will occasionally cause slowness issues, too, even the free ones, but if you’ve got something like McAfee or Norton/Symantec, those are notorious for causing slowdowns.

#15

If you’re willing to let me have remote access I’ll take a look at it for you.

#16

You might also want to check out BlackViper’s website for services you can shut off, assuming Soluto doesn’t tell you about those. It’s under the Popular Content section.

#17

Shouldn’t a memory leak in a program be resolved when you quit that program? Or are you talking about leaks in the OS itself? I find it unfathomable that either could be considered acceptable in an OS.

#18

Well first of all how much space do you have left?

Go to

Start -> Computer -> C Drive

Tell us how much is on your “C-Drive” and how much do you have left.

Tell us how much Ram you have

From the same menu above hit “System Properties” at top and see how much RAM you have.

Then check out how much RAM your computer is using.

Right click on the task bar (at the computer’s bottom)

Click Task manager

Go to Process Tab (on top). At the bottom left you will see a button called “Show processes from all users.” Make sure you click this.

Then go to your Performace tab (on the Task Manager) and look at the “resource manager” button.

I would download the following programs

MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials)
Spybot Search & Detroy
Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware

I’ve never had any of these programs slow my computer. In fact I use them on my netbook as it’s so small with RAM.

If you have no viruses or malware then you’re cool.

You might want to do a factory restore. This will reset your computer to the same place it was when you took it out of the box

So you can buy an internal hard drive and enclose it. OR you can buy an external hard drive. A 2tb drive will go for about $100 on sale now-a-days.

Then simply transfer your files over to your external hard drive.

Then when you ARE SURE, 100% SURE, that you have all your files on your external hard drive, you do the system recovery.

Remember you CAN’T GO BACK, if you do this. Any files not transfered over to your external back up hard drive WILL BE LOST.

I’ve used ESAEUS Partition Manager to clone my drive and it’s easy and free, if you’d rather back up your files to an external drive that way. You can clone the drive as a whole or just a partion on said drive

#19

What I’ve started doing is setting my friends up with a Skype account. When they have a problem, I just connect to them with Skype and then have them share their screen, so I can see what is happening on their computer and coach them.

https://support.skype.com/en-us/faq/FA10215/How-do-I-share-my-screen?q=screen+sharing&fromSearchFirstPage=false

#20

needscoffee, thank you thank you thank you! I downloaded Soluto and it weems to do just what I want. Was able to cull five or six programs out of the boot list. Where has this program been all my life?