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Laptop gets slower the longer it's on
SpeedySwaf
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This just started happening recently. I use a Dell laptop that runs Windows 7. What's started happening is that when I start it up, it moves at the normal speeds it should, but after a few hours it seems to slow to a crawl. Programs are slow to load and save, the internet doesn't move as quickly as it should, and youtube vids and the like transform into stop-motion presentations with very crackly sound. Turning it off the turning it back on a couple hours later seems to resolve the issue, but it starts to do it again a few hours later. I've heard it might be overheating, but I've put it in sleep mode for over an hour or so, and not only did it not feel warm, but the speeds were, if anything, worse.
Does anyone know what might be causing this?
Does anyone know what might be causing this?
SpeedySwaf on
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Posts
Clean the heatsink by blowing air the opposite direction the fan pushes it while the laptop is off. To be extra safe use a pin to stop the fan from spinning while you do this.
A lot of modern laptops will underclock the cpu the hotter it gets.
Check your start up programs (type shell:startup in the search bar) and see if you've got anything running on startup that isn't terminating properly.
You might also have some malware running that's eating your memory. If blowing out the dust doesn't clear things up, download Rkill and see if it finds anything.
That should give you an indication on which way to go, with regards to see's and Draygo's ideas.
As a general first step, I'd run CCleaner (http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner) which clears out temporary files/caches/cookies and in general is just designed to fix the system bog that (thankfully less than it did in the old days) just builds up over time. Make sure you can remember your passwords for websites before you run it as you'll be re-logging in to things like these forums.
After that, have a look at what active processes are running on your machine in the task manager. You might catch a program misbehaving and using up an entire core or two making your system chug. If you're using something like Norton as a virus scanner, replace it with Microsoft Security Essentials (which will do a better job and run faster.) Check what programs you have running on boot in the system tray. Make sure all your software is up to date (you could just have something out of date that's causing a memory leak.) Particularly flash/acrobat/web browsers. If you're still running into the problem I'd even update drivers if only because you're likely to see secondary benefits even if they probably aren't the culprit.