time for a new laptop?

[feather]

  Advanced System Care cleaner, Piriform cleaner, malware, microsoft security essentials, etc are run regularly,

   usually daily-

  however for many weeks, i still get 'not responding' with google chrome, WT library... it just freezes up and won't do anything. have to shut down, restart every day. usually twice each day... 

   this Dell refurb is few yrs old-  is it time for a new laptop? 

  or is there another program that should be run to clear things up a bit?

 

  if time for new, your opinions/ experiences welcome on features to include

     or not include (wdws 7 or 8) in the new purchase. 

   

   advice appreciated

[Elijahsmama]

Sorry! I feel for you. Can't help but I can feel for ya!

[feather]

  also, your thoughts on refurb vs new? 

 

  Musky cute-as-a-button are you out there  

[Musky]

It may be that the laptop's Operating system (Windows) has become bloated and unresonsive, or a program is interfering with the operation of the system.

 

Most "name brand" latops (Dell, HP Gateway, Toshiba, etc) Have a hidden partition on the hard drive that contains a mirror image of the laptops Operating system and programs as it was when the laptop was shipped from the factory. You can hit a key when the laptop is first starting up it's booting process that will take you to a factory "recovery consel" where you can choose to restore the factory image and basically restore the sysetm to it's "new state".

 

What key you need to press to do this varies greatly, but if you watch the sceen as you are booting up, it will tell you. (F4, F6, F10, ESC, etc)

 

The first thing to do though is to get ALL of your personal data files backed up off of the laptop, to an external hard drive or burn them on CD, thumb drives, whatever. Because they will be gone after the factory restore process is finished.

 

As an example only, here are the instructions for a Dell "Inspiron" laptop, but it may be different for yours:

 

Start the computer.

 

As the computer starts, keep pressing the F8 key until the Advanced Boot Options menu appears on the screen.

 

Press the down arrow in order to select Repair Your Computer, then press Enter.

 

Specify the desired language, and then click Next.

 

Log in as a user with administrator credentials, and then click OK.

 

Click Dell Factory Image Restore.

 

In the Dell Factory Image Restore window, click Next.

 

Click to select the checkbox for Yes, reformat hard drive and restore system software to factory condition.

 

Click Next. The computer is restored to the default factory configuration.

 

When the operation is completed, click Finish to restart the computer.

 

I hope this helps!

[1gemstone]

Musky, you are cute as a button.

[shali]

If what Musky says doesn't help, I usually find taking a hammer and my high heels to it helps (it sure doesn't hurt!).

[feather]

thank you Chuck  

  appreciate the step-by-step,

  it helps alot for us less techie types

[Qapla]

Before doing the factory reset you might visit MajorGeeks and follow their proceedures (look for the READ & RUN ME FIRST thread) and follow their step-by-step instructions to see if that fixes your system.

 

There is no charge for their help and their site is Malware Free.

[feather]

John many thanks

  had forgotten about major geeks-

  very informative site

 

  is there another option to back up your info other than costly external drive?

 

      appreciate your help

[shali]

Depends on what you have on your laptop.  Do you have a lot of photo's, video's, music?  If so, an external hard drive is probably your best bet.  If all you have is basically data then you might get by using some flash drives or transferring info to a CD.  You could check out storage to the "cloud" - perhaps some allow this on a monthly basis and all you will have to pay for is a month's worth till you get your laptop in order.

[feather]

 

   strange...

  i always close google chrome prior to Piriform Cleaner and ASC-

  upon beginning scans, both programs send a pop up box:

 'google chrome needs to close, do you want to force close'

  happens every time  

 

  how are these programs detecting it as open, 

  when even task mgr shows it closed...

  can it be running in background somehow?

[1gemstone]

I would not be surprise it the manufactures behind all these devices including TV's were causing strange to happen on our devices that about 5 years old and older, to force us to get new ones. Just my opinion, no scenicfic proof.

[shali]

strange...

  i always close google chrome prior to Piriform Cleaner and ASC-

  upon beginning scans, both programs send a pop up box:

 'google chrome needs to close, do you want to force close'

  happens every time  

 

  how are these programs detecting it as open, 

  when even task mgr shows it closed...

  can it be running in background somehow?

I've noticed that even when my Chrome browser is closed I still have "chrome.exe" processes running in task manager. I think it's because other programs such as Google update and probably anything else made by google are still running in the background. When my Chrome browser is open, I have at least 3 or 4 "chrome.exe" processes showing in task manager. So perhaps this is what those programs are detecting.

[feather]

hmmm... could be- 

  what is peculiar is that task mgr does Not show any google open at all.

  also, that this is something new just started happening this wk.

   thought perhaps it is related to the 'not responding' s-l-o-w-n-e-s-s of overall performance.

 

  appreciate the ideas

 

  advice welcome

[Musky]

Doing what John suggest about using a computer help website, in this case "MajorGeeks" can be very helpful of ridding your system of hidden malware and viruses, etc. It is limited to cleaning the system, which sometimes is all you need. But if the Operating system files are corrupt or some legitimate software program has been damaged and is interfering with the operation of the system, this can be very hard to diagnose. Also, Windows gets "old". It gets bloated and unresponsive over a long period of time (years) Since you said you were considering a new laptop anyway, I suggested using the factory restore feature if available, since you really have nothing to lose if you're considering a new computer anyway. You would need to move your data to a new laptop if you got one in any case. Plus it's always a good idea to have a backup of your data.

 

I worked for a large corporation and we would routinely reformat and re-install Windows on all of the computers every year and in the case of some critical systems, every six months just to keep them running at optimal performance and involved cloning the individual workstations which was very efficient. For a home user, this is of course overkill,. but it illustrates the advantage of a fresh install. 

[shali]

Renee, just send your laptop to Musky - the Borg have all the stuff you need to back up your hard drive, then they wipe your memory and everything is like new again! LOL

[Qapla]

Keep in mind that if you do the factory reset that. in addition to your data, you will need copies of all the software you use because you will have to re-install all of those.

[Musky]

Renee, just send your laptop to Musky - the Borg have all the stuff you need to back up your hard drive, then they wipe your memory and everything is like new again! LOL

 

I thought your recent experience with Jerry would have taught you something. There is a time and place for inane jokes. Go play in the riddle thread and stop cluttering up serious topics! 

[Musky]

Keep in mind that if you do the factory reset that. in addition to your data, you will need copies of all the software you use because you will have to re-install all of those.

 

True, usually factory restore partitions includes all of the software "suites" that shipped with the laptop, which many manufacturers include versions of MS Office, anti-virus apps, etc. But any software you installed yourself would need to be re-installed. 

[shali]

I thought your recent experience with Jerry would have taught you something. There is a time and place for inane jokes. Go play in the riddle thread and stop cluttering up serious topics! 

You know, normally, I would just slink away and not defend myself against a commment like that but I want to say before I leave that I felt I was being a "contributor" (to a lessor degree than yourself, but still trying to help) in this topic. My last posting was another way of me saying to Renee - "I agree with Musky" and I'm sure she will read it as so. You consider this a "serious" topic (perhaps because it is your line of work) while I consider things like death, suicide, depression, war, new understandings as "serious" topics, so perhaps we will not see eye to eye on this one.

[Musky]

You know, normally, I would just slink away and not defend myself against a commment like that but I want to say before I leave that I felt I was being a "contributor" (to a lessor degree than yourself, but still trying to help) in this topic. My last posting was another way of me saying to Renee - "I agree with Musky" and I'm sure she will read it as so. You consider this a "serious" topic (perhaps because it is your line of work) while I consider things like death, suicide, depression, war, new understandings as "serious" topics, so perhaps we will not see eye to eye on this one.

 

You're right, you gave very helpful advice in previous posts and I apologize. I was also mostly giving you a hard time as you do me quite often.

[feather]

I worked for a large corporation and we would routinely reformat and re-install Windows on all of the computers every year and in the case of some critical systems, every six months just to keep them running at optimal performance and involved cloning the individual workstations which was very efficient. For a home user, this is of course overkill,. but it illustrates the advantage of a fresh install. 

 

  this makes sense

  however unistall/reinstall you both speak of

  seems a bit scary- suppose i do it wrong and Really mess things up? *bites lower lip*

 

1 thing i have noticed recently- Chuck you and John may tell me i should have been doing all along-

  if i am away a short time, i leave google chrome open on a few tabs, and 

  WT CD-Rom open and put computer to 'sleep'...

  when i return, there is the trouble, getting it going again- very slow- have to restart.

 

   so, last few days i have been closing all pages, tabs, programs... seems it runs better-

  or is this merely coincidence?

 

    thanks again, valuable advice

[Musky]

No coincidence, Windows has never handled "sleep or Hibernate" very well. Anytime you can close your programs the easier it is for Windows to recover (wake up).

 

Also, shutting down at night or at least restarting once or twice a day can be good for the system as it clears out the memory and frees it up for programs to use. Some programs, even after you shut them down still leave things running in the system memory. There use to be a debate between those who shut their computers down when not using them for a long time and others who felt that shutting down and restarting was hard on a system. But tests show that it is better to shut down when not in use. One reason is that a hard drive spins constantly when powered on. it spins anywhere from 4,200 to 7,200 RPMS (Some even faster). And it only has so many spins in it's lifetime, so the more "breaks" you can give it, the longer it will last. Kind of like the tires on your car. LOL

Edited February 18, 2015 by Musky

[Qapla]

Even if your computer is set to turn the drives off and sleep there are still processes running - that is why it will wake up when you move the mouse/pad or hit a key.

 

If you do need to leave it running, it is best to close all browser tabs/windows since many of the websites include active code that runs while the website is open - that is how ones that display information, like the news, can stay current. Just because you can't see what the page is running does not mean it isn't running anything.

 

At times, my mozilla/fire fox will leave itself running and then refuse to start again because it thinks it is still open. I have to go to task manager to kill the process to make it close completely.

 

Doing the same with those Chrome processes should not hurt your system ... but, there has to be a reason you have so many still active. Mine are usually when I leave a "suspect page" by closing the browser instead of clicking on a spot that wants me to click to close the page.

 

I would still try cleaning the computer with the help of MajorGeeks before I did a reset.

[feather]

a---ha! this is what i am doing wrong.

  Chuck & John you both have helped me so much

 

   thought 'shutdown' was not so good. seems like it would be harder on programs to start up again and again. 

  had a feeling i had it wrong- last few days things ran better with closing wdws, tabs, etc

 

  will try closing all wdws, programs etc then shutdown, not sleep

  and see if this solves issues before major uninstall/ clean sweep-

 

  thanks again. always learn alot from you brothers