10 Tips For Troubleshooting Slow Desktop Or Laptop
1 - Spyware And Viruses
Spyware and viruses pose a significant
security threat, and they can also dramatically decrease computer performance.
The first step when combating spyware should always be to scan the machine with
updated spyware detection/removal and antivirus software. Use these
applications to remove any detected infections. If the software scanners don't
work, here are a few other steps to try.
To remove spyware:
• Identify and end
suspicious processes with Windows Task Manager.
• Identify and
disable suspicious services with the Management Console.
• Identify and
disable suspicious services and startup items with the System Configuration
Utility.
• Search and delete
registry entries associated with suspicious services or startup items.
• Identify and delete
suspicious files.
• Install and use
multiple spyware detection and removal utilities.
If the above
techniques fail, start Windows in Safe Mode and retry. Virus removal techniques
depend heavily on the specific virus variant. You must therefore tailor your
removal efforts to each virus.
2 - Processor Overheating
Modern processors generate a lot of heat.
That’s why all processors require some sort of cooling element, typically a fan
of some type. Machines used for gaming or other processor-intensive activities
often use more sophisticated water cooling or refrigerant systems. When the
processor temperature goes over spec, the system can slow down or run
erratically. Modern motherboards can monitor the processor temperature and
report it through the system BIOS.
The processor fan may
fail for several reasons:
• Dust is preventing
the fan from spinning smoothly.
• The fan motor has
failed.
• The fan bearings
are loose and “jiggling.”
Often you can tell if
there is a fan problem by listening and/or touching the computer. A fan that
has loose bearings starts jiggling and vibrates the case, making a
characteristic noise. You may barely notice the noise at first, and it’s common
for even the experienced computer pro to overlook this change. But as time goes
by, the sounds and vibrations will become so prominent that you’ll change the
fan out just to stop the racket
You don’t always need
to replace the fan. If it is covered with dust, you can often spray away the
dust with compressed air. Note that even though you might get the fan running
again, its life span has likely been reduced because of the overwork. You
should keep an extra fan in reserve in case of failure.
3) Bad RAM
Several situations can lead to a bad RAM
relationship with a particular machine:
• RAM timing is
slower than optimal machine spec.
• RAM has minor flaws
that only appear on detailed testing.
• RAM is overheating.
In the “old days” of
Fast Page RAM, buying new RAM for your computer was a pretty simple affair. You
just needed to know what speed your motherboard supported and the maximum each
slot would take. Today, there are many different speeds and types of RAM, and
the better motherboards may be tolerant of using RAM that does not match the
motherboard’s maximum specs. For example, your motherboard may support ECC RAM
but will still work with non-ECC RAM, or may support both PC2700 and PC3200
DIMMs. But be aware that you may need to change BIOS settings and you may see
performance decreases if you install RAM that is slower than the maximum spec.
Minor flaws in RAM
chips can lead to system slowdowns and instability. The least expensive chips
often have minor flaws that will cause your system to slow down or Blue Screen
intermittently. Although built-in mechanisms may allow the system to keep
working, there is a performance hit when it has to deal with flawed RAM chips. In
the past, no one worried about RAM chips getting hot, because they didn’t seem
to generate much heat. But that’s changed with newer RAM types, especially
SDRAM. To check for overheating, open your computer’s case, power down, and
pull the plug out. Ground yourself and touch the plastic on one of your RAM
chips. Ouch! They get pretty hot. If you find that your RAM chips are
overheating, you should consider buying a separate fan to cool your memory. If
your motherboard doesn’t support a RAM fan, you might be able to get enough
additional cooling by installing a fan card that plugs into a PCI slot. You can
also buy copper “heatspreaders” or RAM heatsinks that improve heat dissipation
and help prevent problems caused by overheated RAM. Some motherboards will even
allow you to mix speeds but will default to the slowest RAM installed.
4) Failing Hard Disk
There may be many signs of imminent failure
before a hard disk finally gives up, depending on the type of failure
(mechanical, electronic, logical or firmware failure). Some of these signs
include:
• Slow access times
on the affected drive.
• An increasing
number of bad sectors when running scandisk and chkdsk.
• Unexplained Blue
Screens.
• Intermittent boot
failures.
Detecting a failing
hard disk can be tricky because the early signs are subtle. Experienced
computer professionals can often hear a change in the normal disk spin (often
manifested as a clicking or crunching noise or a high pitched whine). After the
disk deteriorates further, you’ll see the system crawl to a standstill. Write
processes will take a long time as the system tries to find good blocks to
write to. (This will occur if you’re using a robust file system such as NTFS;
other file systems will likely Blue Screen the computer.) You may get error
messages such as “Windows delayed write failure” on Windows computers.
When you notice the
system slow down, run scandisk or chkdsk, depending on your operating system.
If you notice a bad sector where a good sector existed earlier, that’s a clue
that the disk is going bad. Back up the data on the disk and prepare for it to
fail soon. Make sure you have a spare disk ready so you can replace it when it
fails, or replace the disk as soon as you notice the early signs of failure.
Disk noise and
scandisk/chkdsk are your best indicators for identifying a failing drive that’s
leading to a system slowdown. However, if you are managing a system remotely,
or you can’t take the system down for a full chkdsk/R, you can use tools that
monitor disk health, such as Executive Software’s DiskAlert.
5) BIOS Settings
One often-ignored culprit of system slowdown
is the machine’s BIOS settings. Most people accept the BIOS settings as they
were configured in the factory and leave them as is. However, slowdowns may
occur if the BIOS settings do not match the optimal machine configuration.
Often you can improve machine performance by researching your motherboard’s
optimal BIOS settings—which may not be the same as the factory defaults.
There is no
centralized database of optimal BIOS settings, but a simple Web search on your
motherboard name and BIOS as keywords should yield the correct settings.
You may also be able
to increase performance by updating or “flashing” your BIOS. Check with your
motherboard’s vendor for the software and instructions to do this.
6) Disk Type Or Controller Compatibility
You’ve just purchased a new UDMA-100 disk
drive, and it doesn’t seem any faster than any of the other drives in your
machine. You do some benchmark testing, and the new disk tests the same as the
other drives in your system. So what’s the problem?
It could be that your
motherboard doesn’t support the UDMA 100 specification. Check your manual to
determine what type of IDE interface it supports. If the motherboard only
supports UDMA 33 or 66, then your UDMA 100 throttles down for backwards
compatibility. You can get around this problem by installing a PCI UDMA 100
add-on card and plugging the new drive in to that interface.
Another potential
problem may be the cable type you are using. UDMA 66+ drives require a
different cable than older drive types. The drive may not work at all with the
old cable type. Aged cables will break down over time, especially if they are
tightly folded and the temperature of the case remains consistently high. It’s
always worthwhile to change out the drive cable to see if performance improves.
Also keep in mind
that over the course of a year to 18 months, hard disk technology improves so
that performance of newer disks is substantially greater (and so are disk
capacities). Replacing older disks, even if they are not at risk of failure,
can give you a big performance boost. New Serial ATA (SATA) disks are faster
than old Parallel ATA types.
7) Windows Services
Many Windows services are enabled by default.
Many of these services, however, are not required for your machine to run
properly. You should review the services running on your Windows 2000/Windows
XP computer and disable those that you don’t need.
One way to see what
services are running is to use the Services applet found in the Administrative
Tools menu. Right-click My Computer and select Manage. Important information
contained in the Services console includes the service Name, Status, and
Startup Type. You can get more details on a service by double-clicking on it to
bring up the service's Properties.
You can stop the
service by clicking the Stop button. If you are sure that you don’t need the
service, click the down arrow in the Startup Type drop-down list box and set
the service to Disabled. If you are not sure if you need the service, change
the Startup Type to Manual. Then you’ll have the option of manually starting
the service if you find that you need it.
Another way of
controlling which services start is using the msconfig utility. Open the Run
dialog box and type msconfig in the Open text box. The Essential column shows
services Microsoft considers essential to running the computer. However, note
that many required services are not defined as essential in the System
Configuration Utility window. You can prevent a service from starting at bootup
by unchecking the check box to the left of the service.
One service that is
well known for slowing down Windows 2000/Windows XP systems is the Indexing Service.
This service indexes the content of each hard disk and makes it easier for the
Search utility to find files. Unless you are running a Web site that uses the
indexing service, you may want to disable it to improve performance.
8) Runaway Processes
Runaway processes take up all of the
processors' cycles. The usual suspects are badly written device drivers, and
legacy software installed on a newer operating system. You can identify a
runaway process by looking at the process list in the Windows Task Manager. Any
process that takes almost 100 percent of the processing time is likely a
runaway process.
There are exceptions
to this rule. On a smoothly running system, the System Idle Process should be
consuming the majority of the processor cycles most of the time. If any other
process were to take up 98 percent of the processor cycles, you might have a
runaway process.
If you do find a
runaway process, you can right-click the process and click the End Process
command. You may need to stop some processes, such as runaway system services,
from the Services console. If you can’t stop the service using the console, you
may need to reboot the system. Sometimes a hard reboot is required.
9) Disk Fragmentation
As files are added, deleted, and changed on a
disk, the contents of the file can become spread across sectors located in
disparate regions of the disk. This is file fragmentation. Some older operating
systems, such as Windows NT, don’t have a built-in defrag utility; you must
obtain a third-party solution, such as Executive Software’s Diskeeper.
Disk fragmentation
can significantly slow down your machine. The disk heads must move back and
forth while seeking all the fragments of a file. A common cause of disk
fragmentation is a disk that is too full. You should keep 20 percent to 25
percent of your hard disk space free to minimize file fragmentation and to
improve the defragmenter’s ability to defrag the disk. Thus, if a disk is too
full, move some files off the drive and restart the defragmenter.
In Windows XP, you
can use the defrag.exe command line tool to schedule defragmentation on a
regular basis. For Windows 2000, you can use a program such as AutoDefrag to schedule defragmentation.
10) Background Applications
Have you ever visited an end-user’s desktop
and noticed a dozen icons in the system tray? Each icon represents a process
running in either the foreground or background. Most of them are running in the
background, so the users may not be aware that they are running 20+
applications at the same time.
This is due to
applications starting up automatically in the background. Look first for such
programs in the Startup folder in the Start menu. Many applications place
components in the Startup folder to run in the background. Some of these, such
as the Microsoft Office Findfast, can really chew up processor and disk time
and noticeably slow down a system. Review each of the entries in the Startup
folder and delete any that are unnecessary.
Not all programs that
run at startup appear in the Startup folder. Another place to look is the
following registry keys:
HKEY_
LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
In Windows XP, run
msconfig and check the Startup tab to view startup programs. You can uncheck
the boxes to keep individual programs from running at startup.
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