Laptop problems.

[Willa]

Hi there, help or advice please.

I have an Advent laptop, duel core, wireless with Norton security.
Lately it has been running slow as if there is a background programme running and it is making the whirring sound the more it gets busy, not sure if that is the hard drive or fan running.
Also it fells quite warm on the underside.

I have uninstalled Norton briefly, but does not make any difference.

My daughter has just uploaded Itunes and downloaded several albums, could this have something to do with it.

Any ideas please?

Thanks in advance

 

[dave.m]

Sounds like the fan and heat exchanger are choked with dust etc.
When unplugged, remove the back and clean out the fan and fins on the heat exchanger for a start. Do NOT be tempted to use a vacuum cleaner, get a tin of compressed air from Maplins or the like, and a soft small paintbrush.
Once clened out try it and see what it is like for heat and noise.
Post back
Just a suggestion but a laptop is not intended to be use on the lap, or any other soft material such as chair arms, as it gets fibres sucked in.

dave

 

[wanleg]

When it does run task manager (CTRL+ALT+DELETE on XP Home) and look at the performance tab.....is the CPU Usage really high, like 100%. If it is then look at the Proceses column, sort by CPU usage by double clicking on the column heading 'CPU' twice. Post back which process is consuming the most CPU and what amount.

The above instructions assume XP home....you don't say which operating system you are running.

 

[Willa]

Many thanks for the advice and taking time to reply.

I will do as advised (once I can get the family off the laptop)

Will let you know how I got on.

 

[Willa]

Hi Wanleg,

The system is Windows Vista - Home Premium, do I still run task manager as per your instructions?

Thanks again

 

[wanleg]

I haven't got Vista installed (by choice) but I'm certain task manager will be there so yes follow same procedure.

 

[tim west]

In Task Manager click on the process tab then go to view in the menu and choose the select columns option, in the next dialog tick Virtual Memory
and then ok.
you may need to scroll the handle at the bottom of the task manager window to reveal the VM Size column, then click twice on the VM Size button at the top of the window and this will show memory hungry processes.

type the process into google to see what it does and whether you can do without the application that is calling the process or not, whatever, it will give you an idea as to what is hogging your VM which is disk based and slower than RAM.