Computer screen freezes

P

Pablo74

Registered User
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218
Hello.
I have noticed over the last few months that my computer has slowed down considerably. There are times when i click the "X" to close out of a window and nothing happens for 8 or 9 seconds,When i click on a link or slide the navi bar up and down nothing happens, it just freezes and 30 seconds later it will do all my commands at once.
Has anyone an opinion on what to do ?
It is a dell computer, 6 yrs old and runs off XP.
Regards
Pablo
 
Try defragging your hard disk.
Check that there's no rogue processes running and that you have no malware.
 
Thanks for the reply.
I will defrag but how do i know about rogue prosses ?
i AM A BIT OF A NO BRAINER WHEN IT COMES TO THIS ?
pABLO
 
Hi Pablo
If you try http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ it'll give you step by step instructions about what to do to look for malware on your computer. There is also a tutorial on what to do to check out a 'slow computer'.
Hopefully that will sort you out :)
Nicola
 
Pablo74 said:
i AM A BIT OF A NO BRAINER WHEN IT COMES TO THIS ?
Click to expand...
I'd suggest the best thing you could do is have a friend who is fairly clued in with IT to have a look at the machine.

The suggestion to defrag and check for malware etc. is certainly worth doing and something that doing some research on to try and better understand what's happening is very beneficial.

If you've had the computer 6 years, chances are that its pretty full of non essential software/files. Try to remove anything you know you don't need before you spend time defragging it (if you've a doubt what something is, take great care before deleting in. If in doubt, don't touch it).
(I'd also suggest running a cleaning tool, such as CCleaner, to remove a lot of un-needed background stuff... but again, take care if you're not sure what you're doing)

A lot of the software you've installed over the years will probably (from experience with friends who have complained about slow computers) have set itself to run on start up and remain in the system tray (running in the background). A lot of this stuff is seldom used/required and will slow down your PC. It's easy enough to change the settings so that this doesn't happen, but knowing what you can/should remove would take a little bit of time/knowledge.

There are lots of things which can cause the slowing performance of a computer, most of the time it's not one single thing but the combination of lots of things.

Even with all of the clean ups etc you might find that if your computer spec is low, the increasing demands of modern software (each time something is updated it usually requires a little more speed/memory as the software is updated to run on higher spec hardware) might be adding to the slowdown.
 
restore to a date previous to when you started having the problem,no data will be lost.
 
sparkeee said:
restore to a date previous to when you started having the problem,no data will be lost.
Click to expand...
What data is/might be lost will depend on the type of restore (and it will depend on whether the OP has a restore point to roll back too). Some restores will wipe all new data from the time the image was taken until now (a number of months for the OP), so to be attempted with great care.

Given the fact that the slowdown has happened over a number of months (possibly even longer before the OP even noticed it) the use of a restore point wouldn't be the obvious solution (more commonly used to solve an accute problem - e.g. yesterday all was fine, today it's broke).
 
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