My PC

[Drumcondra Red]

Is proper fooked! Its running so slow it may as well be going backwards, its crap, takes a bleedin' age to do anything! Anyone have any ideas, or know how to fix it, it really wrecking my head!!!

[finlma]

CTRL+ALT+DEL

Alternatively turn it off and turn it back on again.

[Green Tribe]

Sorry, Me + Computers = no clue.

There are plenty of computer experts on here who will help no doubt!

[the 12 th man]

Wouldn't be too well up meself but I would imagine First question is going to be how old is your computer ?.

[paul_oshea]

ya

c:\format c:

go to your bios set your cd rom as your boot drive, then insert your windows cd and reinstall everything again, it will run a treat after reinstalling everything.

[paul_oshea]

pm me and i will give you some more advice if you want, btu seriouslly reinstalling is the handiest and quickest way to do it, it will be all dont in an hour.

[tetsujin1979]

Defragment the hard drive, clear out the temp directory and the temporary internet files directory.
Delete/Burn to CD any files or games you don't use anymore, if there's not much space on the hard drive, Windows has less space to use as swap space instead of memory
If it abysmally slow, there may be spyware or viruses running on the machine, run a virus check on it and also run one of the anti-spyware programs on it
Also try running a registry mechanic program on it, if it's gone too big or has invalid links in, it can slow your machine down. Mate of mine uninstalled Winzip, but the link in the context menu to zip a program still remained, took an age to figure out that's what was causing the problem

[Drumcondra Red]

Ok, I did the CD-ROM thinkg a couple of weeks ago, slight improvement, ran all adware and spywear checks, my computer is just under 2 years old!

Wtf does defragment mean???

[paul_oshea]

no dred, i mean delete everything from your machine. its prolly spyware, a couple of mates have had the same problems i have found out the issues and removed but the handiest thing is just delete everything format the whole pc and reinstall.

what tets is on about is going to accessories -> system tools - defragment realistically this does feck all. there is no point spending an age on it, just format everything and reinstall. make sure you back up anything you need.

[Ash]

Wtf does defragment mean???

Defrag kinda rewrites parts of files to sectors to speed up access times etc.

Go to Start Menu --> Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools
and run a defrag from there. Could take a long time to run but should speed
things up in the end

[Green Tribe]

How's it going? You're on here, so obviously you have found the 'on' button!!

[Troy.McClure]

Go here and forget about all that Bill Gates malarkey

[nephin]

Only format your hard drive as a last resort. Can be a hassle re-installing windows if you haven't done it before. Pretty good advice from tetsujin1979. Have you ran a virus check and run anti-spyware software as tetsujin1979 sugessted? Let us know how you get on

[Drumcondra Red]

Thansk for all suggestions, most I'd done before i.e. adware/ spyware scans, virus scans etc., don't know whats up, when I get home from work I'll try a few more things, its just so slow!

Gareth said he'd come over and help, but he never did because he's a flithy, camera, thieving liar

He obviously hasn't been on this forum for a while!!!

[Peadar]

Gareth said he'd come over and help, but he never did...

I'll call over and fix it good for you!

[Drumcondra Red]

You do know what I won't give in return, don't you??? I've PM'd Gar this thread, that should put a rocket up his arse!

[Peadar]

...that should put a rocket up his arse!

Right, I retract my offer.
You never said anything about shoving something up my arse in return!

[Drumcondra Red]

Hahaha You'r more then welcome to fix it for me if that is a valid offer Peadar!!

[RonnieB]

formatting is rather drastic. A good virus scan and spyware scan. You can do a free online virus scan at http://housecall.trendmicro.com

Spybot and adaware are worth looking up. However certain spyware/malware will always hide itself in cases making using the programs pointless. Download a copy of Hijack This as well and run it and save the log and post it. Might show what is starting on yer machine. Get it from http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html also has a nice program called CW shredder very handy for destroying the basterd that is coow web search.

[Lionel Ritchie]

Just to add to what tetsujin1979 said: You do indeed need to clear out your temp and temporary internet files directory (it might ask you do you want to delete "cookies" when you go to do the latter - say NO for safety sake.) and by the sound of things you most certainly do need to defragment your hard drive BUT depending on the size of your hard drive it can take ages (you say your machine is 2 years old so I'm guessing it's about 40GB - 60GB hard drive.) Defragmenting is much faster if you do it in SAFE MODE -which is a diagnostic mode that lets windows run on minimum resources.

To start in Safe Mode:

Reboot (turn it off then turn it back on -hope I'm not being pedantic)
While it's rebooting hold down Ctrl -it should* offer you a menu including
1. normal mode
2. MS-DOS
3. Safe Mode

-select Safe Mode
-when it's finished booting follow Ash' instructions of defragmenting.

*in the event you get a message up saying "stuck key" release the Ctrl key briefly and press it again. If it asks you to press Esc to continue -do so -it should proceed to the start up options from which you'll select safe mode.

Finally -on some systems (particularly older ones) it's F7 rather than the Ctrl key you press while booting to get the safe mode option.

For the life of me I'll never understand why they dont just put it in the start-up/shut down options along with Restart or log off or Stand By.