Thinger

I have ben running vista on my laptop for about a year. When I first installed it my laptop ran fine. But now I can hardly use it because it is so slow. Is there anything I can do to improve my performance. It usually takes about 10 mi. to log on to the internet. Surfing the net is just about impossible because it takes forever to load pages. Any help or simple tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Compy386

Hello,

There are many things one can do to attempt to improve the speed of their machine.

The first thing I like to do is get a good spyware scanner. I happen to like Spybot Search and Destroy. It happens to be freely available which is very nice. You can get yourself a copy here: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html <=== just select a download mirror and away you go. Make sure that you install all the updates before you run your first scan! Spybot can also try and keep your computer from getting gummed up

It would also be good to have antivirus software installed (if you don't already). I personally am a fan of AVG Antivirus which is free for personal use. If you have Norton or McAfee installed... my opinion is that they tend to slow your computer up, but certainly not to the level you describe. I mention that only as a further optimization and opinions as to whether they actually slow down your computer vary. At any rate if you need antivirus software I suggest you download AVG which you can get here: http://free.grisoft.com/ww.download?prd=afe Just install it and allow it to update and you should be off and running with that.

Finally another thing that can cause problems, slow startup times especially, is having too many programs try and load at boot time. Here is a guide to using a handy little tool called msconfig: http://www.netsquirrel.com/msconfig/msconfig_vista.html It would be difficult to do all that much harm with msconfig. If you notice something is not working right after you stop processes from starting just go back in and enabled it again.

Also make sure you aren't using all of your hard drive space. If you using every last bit of it Windows might not like that it doesn't have much room for the swap file. This was at an issue in XP. I am not 100% sure if it is also an issue with Vista (though the swap file is important to any operating system so it seems likely that it would cause problems).

That's what I can think of off the top of my head. If you have any more questions feel free to ask.

Thinger

How do I see how much memory is being used?

Compy386

Do you mean hard drive space?

If you did mean hard drive space the easiest way to check that is to open up My Computer and click on the C drive and it should display some basic information about the drive.

If you meant how do you find the amount of free RAM:

the easiest way is to use alt-ctrl-del and goto the Performance tab. I'm pretty sure there is a section that says "Physical Memory" (I don't currently have a Vista machine in front of me) and under there it tells you how much is free.

Hope that helps!

Thinger

I checked the memory it says i have 1917 total, 1133 cached,and 0 free. CPU usage is 100%. Is this why my laptop is so slow?

Compy386

So the computer has been running for a bit? In other words, are you sure the computer is completely finished booting? If you are sure, then yes this is totally what is making your computer slow.

If you go to the list of processes you can sort them by clicking the labels for each column. So if you click the CPU column label it will sort by which processes are using the most CPU usage. If you want to post the top culprits in memory usage and cpu usage I would be happy to look at it.

Good luck!

Thinger

Here are the top users of memory that you asked for:

1.dwm.exe
2. iexplore.exe
3.teatimer.exe
4.sidebar.exe
5.explorer.exe
6.msnmsgr.exe
7.ccc.exe

Compy386

Well, none of those processes look bad in any way so that is good at least. Here is a description of them all

1.dwm.exe - This is used by Vista to render the Aero interface. If you disable Aero (which is perfectly safe) this process should go away and thereby getting you some memory back. I have heard that this can be both a memory and CPU hog

2. iexplore.exe - Internet explorer: There isn't much you can do about this really it uses the memory it will use. You can help it run better by not running many of toolbars that are out there (yahoo, google, etc)

3.teatimer.exe - Used by spybot search and destroy (if you don't have spybot installed then it could be a virus)

4.sidebar.exe - Displays the Windows Vista sidebar.

5.explorer.exe - The Windows shell: This does a variety of tasks but the bottom line is that it is an important part of Windows

6.msnmsgr.exe - MSN instant messenger

7.ccc.exe - Catylst Control Center: Changes and controls settings from ATI graphics cards. This is nothing to worry about. I actually don't think you need to have this running, but I doubt it is using that much memory anyway.

If you are curious about any more processes that are running, typically if you run the name through google you can get a good idea, or if you want to post it here I don't mind having a look at it.

In terms of making your laptop faster I would try disabling Aero and seeing if that makes a difference. Here is a guide which explains the process: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...windows-vista/

After you disable Aero you may have to reboot for the dwm.exe process to go away, but I do not know for sure. If I could try it myself I would, but I can not. If you still find that your computer is using 100% cpu then post the processes using the most CPU and we can have a look at those or if you want to look them up on google and ask questions here that's cool too :)

Good luck and I hope that helps!

Thinger

I noticed that MSKDetct.exe is using 88 to 91 under the cpu label. It says that this is a mcafee spamkiller account detector. I do not have mcafee anymore, is there any way to remove his process. Thanks for the help so far.

Compy386

Well any process that uses that much CPU consistently is bound to cause trouble. Typically most applications will not put that much strain on the average processor (these days anyway). The only exceptions are things like movie encoders or mp3 rippers. Then, of course, games will also do this. However in all those cases you are normally doing that single dedicated task and expect your system to slow up a bit.

Before trying to remove the process try using the process manager to kill the process. See if the speed of your laptop improves after you do that. If it does then of course you have found the main culprit behind your troubles. If not you should still probably remove it from starting, but you would need to look into the problem more.

After doing a bit of googleing I found that the process typically starts itself via a registry entry. If you have never entered the vast and rather disturbing world of the windows registry fear not because it should be fairly painless to do this. Here is what you will want to do:

1. Open up the start menu and select Run
2. Type in regedit and hit enter (Vista should now ask you if you are sure you want to open this)
3. Navigate your way through this: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
This is, first goto HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE then SOFTWARE ... etc. until you get to the Run fold
4. Click on the run folder and you will see some services that are run automatically when you log into your account
5. Find the entry for MSKDetct and delete that entry.
6. Now you can close regedit (there is no save, all changes happen immediately)
7. Reboot your computer
8. Open the process list and make sure MSKDetct is NOT running

Best of luck! Let me know if you have any more questions/problems :)

Thinger

That has worked.There is a warning I get about ATI whenever I boot up my laptop.This is what it says. The catalyst control center is not supported by the driver version of your enabled graphics driver.Please update your graphics driver, or enable your ATI adapter using the displays manager. I have tried to update the driver numerous times. Everytime I do my screen blinks and turns blue. I then have to restart in safe mode and revert back to the old driver.Any ideas on what is happening.Also there is a process sprtcmd.exe that is also using alot of physical memory do you know if I need this proces running.Thanks for al of your help it has sped up my laptop quite a bit.

Compy386

I am sorry, but I am not really sure why it would do that. It is possible that it is not yet compatible with Vista. However that is just a guess. How long have you been getting this warning?


Here is what file.net says:

Not sure what one of those you have, but if you don't need that specific application then just uninstall the application and sprtcmd should go away. If you want to do a quick test to see if you need it just stop it while viewing it in the process list. If nothing breaks... then you don't need it. As long as you are careful it is ok to play around with things like that. Just try and make sure you don't kill a process directly used by Windows. Even if you do that, the worst that happens is that you will need to reboot :)

Best of luck!

Thinger

i think i have had that warning ever since i installed vista, so it probably is just a compatibility issue.thanks for all your help.my laptop is just like new again.

Compy386

Awesome! Glad I was able to help :)