The Alfred Computer Guy: Slow computer
Dear Mike,
I found it ironic that just when my computer drastically became slower, an article about keeping a clean computer was in the Fiat Lux.
The battery for my Acer Aspire 5050 died recently and I have a new one on the way covered by the warranty, however, I had to ship my old one. At first it was normal but by Oct. 31 around noon it was slower than my dad’s first computer from the early 90s.
I have been checking for all important updates, including XP and Microsoft updates as well as Bit Defender (my security). My scanners haven't picked up anything bad, but they have taken much longer to complete than normal. I also ran through and made sure I didn't have any spy-ware kicking around.
My question is this: is the absence of my battery causing my computer to run much, much slower than it should, or could there be something else causing this slowness?
Sincerely,
A.C.
Dear A.C.,
The battery and AC Adapter rarely have an effect on the performance of a computer; problems arising from these parts are usually very immediate and obvious. My guess is that there is some bad software floating around in there and if your scanners aren’t showing anything (kudos to you for running updates and scans, by the way), then it may be non-malicious software that is just not working the way it should.
The first thing to do is check and see what, specifically, is slowing the system down. There are many software tools for this job, but we’ll stick with the stuff built into XP.
The method I’ll detail here is not the fastest, but it is quite thorough. Basically, all the little services and start-up programs that run when your computer boots up (many of them you don’t see) tend to bog things down horribly, exponentially so when one of them is not operating like it should.
These services are most times innocent, but aside from your antivirus, are largely unnecessary. When I get asked, “Why is my computer so much slower than when I first bought it even though I don’t do much?” these services and processes are usually the answer.
When you install programs such as Adobe Reader, Java, iTunes, AIM, etc. they often load a start-up process or service that you can turn off with the proper know-how. Note that turning these off typically does NOT break the application, but will prevent it from starting automatically when you log in. In this case, that’s precisely what we want.
Before we do anything, we want to create a Restore Point; what we’re about to do with the services can be a bit tricky and if anything goes wrong, it’s always good to have a way back. Click your Start Menu, go to All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and choose “System Restore." Click the “Create a Restore Point” button and follow the on-screen instructions until successfully completed. Now we’re ready to begin.
Click your Start Menu, choose Run and enter "msconfig" (without the quotation marks). Click the Services tab, check "Hide All Microsoft Services", then Disable All. Uncheck “Hide All Microsoft Services” to ensure that everything listed with “Microsoft Corporation” is still enabled (you want to leave these on) and click Apply. Afterward, go to your Start-up tab, disable all and Apply. Click OK and reboot.
When the computer comes back on and you log in, you'll get a message about the System Configuration Utility being run - just uncheck the box and close the window.
Now, use your computer. Open applications and try things out for a bit. Is it performing well? Is your speed back to where it should be? If not, then there might be a deeper issue and you can call the ITS Helpdesk so we can really roll up our sleeves on the problem.
If, however, everything looks and feels fine at this point, you can go ahead and load “msconfig” to turn things back on. I strongly recommend doing this one at a time (check one box, reboot, check your performance, then repeat).
Remember that, as I said earlier, leaving these disabled typically doesn’t “break” applications, so if you are pleased with your performance having a good deal of these left off, then by all means continue running that way. My only warning about this is to make sure you at least have your antivirus or security software on and running.
If you find that one magic moment where you've turned a process or service on, rebooted, and your computer is crawling again, you have now found your original culprit. It’s up to you whether or not to disable, uninstall, or update the application to fix the problem.
Before wrapping this one up, I’d like to make a note to the rest of the readers out there. The “msconfig” program in Windows is strong stuff… powerful juju that may cause your computer to not function like it should if used incorrectly. There are elements and tabs there that extend far beyond what I’ve talked about in this article and I humbly advise that unless you really know what you are doing, you leave them alone.
Good luck!
Do you have any questions you would like to ask? Send me an e-mail at: stone@alfred.edu with the subject “Alfred Computer Guy”. Mac, PC, Linux, OS/2 Warp, NeXT… hit me with your best shot!
