As above. So I turn on my Windows 7 laptop which I’ve had for 3 years or so, and once it’s at desktop, it’s basically unusable for a period of time, which varies from ten minutes to half an hour.
I can move the mouse, but launching programs can be troublesome. My first movement is normally to launch Chrome, which it will eventually do, but internet won’t connect.
Other programmes, including My Computer, are also insanely slow or non-operative.
Then suddenly, after leaving it alone for half an hour or so, it will respond to everything absolutely fine and I’ll have no further trouble.
It’s an Intel Core i3 2.5Ghz with 8GB RAM (I upgraded it from 4GB several years ago). If I launch Task Manager, it shows during that period the CPU being 33% engaged (with some fluctuation), and about 2 or 3 GB RAM being used. Once these fall to near zero, I know it’s ready to use. I have a 400GB HD which has about 100GB free.
So any suggestions as to what’s causing this little mystery?
You really, really want to run a backup, and soon. My work computer began “hanging up” at a certain point during startup a few months back. It would eventually get past the speed bump, and function correctly. Up until the morning it didn’t. IT was not able to save anything from the hard drive, which took a giant digital shit apparently.
Not saying yours is ready to die, but a back-up is def in order.
You need to check exactly what processes are causing the CPU to register 33% usage. You should be able to easily track them down with the Task Monitor or if you need something a little more analytic download Process Explorer from Microsoft or simply run it online. Once you’ve found the process or processes causing the hangup you’ll have a better handle on what’s wrong.
I have the same problem with Windows XP. My guess is the latest Microsoft Updates which have caused a lot of problems - Google is your friend.
Apparently if one Update is loaded before another, they conflict and freezing results.
In my case I’ve used System Restore going back ten days and right now am pondering what to do to get past the issue. Even leaving the pc booting for an hour didn’t work. I’ve run anti-malware cleaners and anti-virus but nothing found. Had to go to Safe Mode to do anything - F8 on bootup.
Thing is, and I know this is stupid of me, it’s been doing this for about a year. I have Mint on the computer which boots no trouble at all and I could use that, but Mint I find doesn’t have as much user-friendliness as Windows (and that’s saying something!)
I’ll get onto doing a full backup once I’ve moved house at the end of this week.
By any chance, is your antivirus running an automatic scan on startup? That will cause the sluggish performance you describe, then return to normal when it completes.
Since you are on Windows 7, you may also want to check out msconfig and see what programs are loading during that short startup. Type it into your start menu to find it.
(If you were on Windows 8, you could do that in the Task Manager, too.)
My own experience of Task Manager (running XP) is that I tried to kill processes but nothing happened.
The CPU was almost silent at 3%, the RAM usage 750MB out of 3GB, no programs running, but the desktop would not complete loading.
I could (and might) kill everything which loads at Startup but there are still a couple of hundred MS processes which run in order for the computer to know its a computer. Plus stopping svchost etc doesn’t seem like a good idea.
if your Laptop comes with a checkup tool at the boot screen you can run that.
alternative you can go hereand download the Ultimate Boot CD and burn it to a CD. Boot from it and select HDD , then HDD Recovery and run PhotoRec or TestDisk - it contains a HDD test facility called Disk Health which gives you a good idea if your drive is faulty or about to die.
I have a similar problem with XP sometimes, and using task manager to kill the explorer process and then running it as a new task fixes it quite reliably.