Having 4 videos on your computer isn't going to make it slower unless you have a tiny hard drive. But if you were using a P2P program you might have downloades malware as well, which can slow down your computer. You should run adaware and cwshredder and see if you have any infections. If you do you should head to the security forum and post something there.

 

Try this first:-
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

and if that doesn't help ... try here:-
http://www.techsupportforum.com/showthread.php?t=15968

Peter

 

Having 4 videos on your computer isn't going to make it slower unless you have a tiny hard drive.

How can I check the size of my hard drive, and subsequently what size is deemed as small. I'm not too knowledgable on computer things.

EDIT: I'm downloading the videos from a site devoted to the band. The site administrator told me in a message board that the videos are virus free. Just in case I ran a hijack log last night after downloading one, and it was clean.

 

Go to Start and then My Computer - right click on the local disc icon and select 'properties' ... you will see the used and spare capacity of your hard drive.

Peter

 

It says I've used 7.32 GB and have 30.9 GB of free space.

 

It seems you have a lot of spare drive space then - if you right click on the files you are thinking of downloading and select 'Properties' it should tell you what the file size is.

Peter

 

Great :sayyes: Considering I've used 7 GB a few videos about 40MB wouldn't really make any difference to that figure? What's the best way to free up disk space? If I deleted files e.g pics, music, videos, would I logically gain the disk space that they take away? Thanks for your help, by the way.

 

You have plenty of free disk space. THIS IS NOT THE PROBLEM.

Did you run the Online antivirus scan? Also a spybot and ad-aware scan would be a good idea.

 

I never said there was a problem, I was worried about the potential of my PC slowing down. I'll do a couple of scans though in case.

 

Impossible unless your PC is infected with virus/spyware/malware

Downloading 5 music videos won't slow your PC but it could slow your Internet surfing speed depending on your Internet connection...

 

Downloading 5 music videos won't slow your PC but it could slow your Internet surfing speed depending on your Internet connection...

That would be while you are downloading them; after they were downloaded it would be the same as before.

 

You could create a folder on your drive for your downloads and then check the files over for viruses before running them. At the present time you have a lot of spare drive space - if you want to keep the used space to a minimum and you have a CD/DVD burner you could transfer the files to CD for storage and then delete the downloaded files.

Having a substantial amount of data on your drive shouldn't make any major difference to the speed things work at - it will help to defrag your drive regularly if you are downloading and deleting a lot of stuff - go to My Computer again and right click on the relevant hard-drive (local drive icon) select 'properties' then 'tools' and you will see the 'defrag option'. It can take a while (depends on the size of the drive, how much data, and what state it is in), so leaving it running last thing at night can be quite a good idea.

The other thing I find keeps everything moving at a good pace is to run Regseeker about once a month to clean out any unwanted stuff that's hanging around in the registry. Be sure to check the back-up option and if you run it on auto :'clean the registry' you can use your delete key to remove the unwanted bits and pieces.
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/regseeker.html

You can also use Regseeker to manually remove individual keys but unless you are absolutely sure of what you are doing this can be very risky and lead to problems starting or running your machine - so be careful on that issue.

If your machine suddenly slows without explanation, the first thing to do is to check for infection and Trend Micro Housecall is a very good way of getting an independent scan to double check your resident anti-virus protection.

I have found the Microsoft Anti-Spyware program to be pretty good too - it's free and runs in the background with automatic updates.

Peter

 

I think I'll use that defragging thing tomorrow. If I run regseeker on auto is there no chance of "problems starting or running your machine."
I'll download the microsoft anti-spyware program tomorrow at http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

I would do all this now only I'm going to bed.

 

When analyzing the hard drive for defragmentation at 97% it said:

The scan has been canceled because an error occurred in file: C:\System Volume Information\_restore{9A8C29C7-82CC-4BC4-8618-C700A2FBA69E}-\RP139\A02306693.INI

 

There's an option to check the disc for errors ... try that.

Then if that's all ok - I would suggest just running the defrag anyway.

Peter