How do I stop my laptop from being shit?

[Viazon]

Every PC or laptop I have had always ends up becoming really slow and crap. I have just never been that great ain't maintaining it I suppose. I always have Norton anti virus. I thought all you need is some kind of anti virus to keep your computer safe.

As I said, I am not really that great with computers. My skills are in fact very basic. I can surf the internet and download stuff and that's about it. When it comes to protecting your computer, I feel I am fairly useless.

My laptop is quite slow right now. Even as I am typing this, there is a delayed reaction from when I press a key and when the letter actually appears on screen. The same when I try and scroll up and down a page. A lot of the time, Firefox says its not responding and I will have to close the page.

Lately, I have been getting a lot of pop ups, asking my to fix the problems on my computer and asking me to perform some kind of scan to speed up my computer. But I don't know if these things are to be trusted? Is this normal? Do you have to eventually perform these scans that pop up on your screen to keep your computer working properly?

Some of the things I get popping are stuff like, PC Health Kit, Activeris AntiMalware, SuperFast PC, SpeedUpMyPC and stuff like that. All asking me that I need to perform scans to fix problems on my computer. There are so many of them though and they keep popping up when I try to click on links. Are these things reliable and are they things you need to do to keep your computer running well?

I don't use my laptop for much. Pretty much just browsing and downloading music. I'm sure there are many members of the board who have experience in this sort of stuff and as I said, I'm pretty useless and that sort of stuff.

So what is it you really need to do or what kind of precautions do you have to take to keep your computer up to scratch?

[Romo]

what specs is your laptop?

[Viazon]

what specs is your laptop?

No idea. This would be the kind of thing I'm clueless about.

[Romo]

what specs is your laptop?

No idea. This would be the kind of thing I'm clueless about.

start > control panel > system.... look at the "installed memory"

[Viazon]

what specs is your laptop?

No idea. This would be the kind of thing I'm clueless about.

start > control panel > system.... look at the "installed memory"

6.00 GB (5.59 GB usable)

[PorkChop]

First of all, Norton is notorious for slowing down PC's.

Download CCleaner and run everything, also stuff like Auslogics Defrag to get rid of the shite on it.

[Romo]

what specs is your laptop?

No idea. This would be the kind of thing I'm clueless about.

start > control panel > system.... look at the "installed memory"

6.00 GB (5.59 GB usable)

try running a 'Windows Experience Index' test (in the systems section)

if your running on 6gb RAM you shouldn't have a slow laptop... check your hard drives (my computer) and see if they are full.....

[Viazon]

I have two hard disk drives under My Computer (assuming thats what you mean)

One is Local Disk which says 578 GB free of 678 GB.

And the other is RECOVERY which says 2.46 GB free of 19.7 GB.

[PorkChop]

I have two hard disk drives under My Computer (assuming thats what you mean)

One is Local Disk which says 578 GB free of 678 GB.

And the other is RECOVERY which says 2.46 GB free of 19.7 GB.

Download CCleaner and scan/wipe the free space on your computer. It takes a while but it'll help.

[Viazon]

Thanks. I'll give that a go.

[JPG619]

If you have any Malware on your system I use malwarebytes works wonders and fixes most issues since you said you are getting popups. There could be Malware on your system

[blackparade]

I'd uninstall all that "speed up my pc" crap immediately. That's what keeps popping up. I hate when I get a pc at work that has all that shit on there. Good suggestions by the rest here. CCleaner and MalwareBytes is good. That computer shouldn't be crawling, there's gotta be something infecting it.

[Westcoastvibes]

I am currently doing the same shit. Ran ccleaner now running full security scan then onto malware scan and defrag. Computer has been shit for a while, takes like 3-5 mins for ie or chrome to work after opened and everything else lags horribly

[dakotabear]

Remove Norton and install Microsoft security essentials, that will improve your speed.

Also CC cleaner to clear any crap that's not doing anything.

Run a disk defrag that will also help by clearing clusters that are not being used.

Also what might help is clearing out what apps and processes run upon start up, that can be a contributing factor also.