Time for a reformat
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Hi I've had the same laptop for over 5 years(got it for my 18th) but in the last few months its been going so slow for even the simplest things like opening Word and Mozilla Firefox at the same time. Ive checked the processes, checked startup(msconfig) defraged and still the same Is it time for a reformat of the hard drive, how often do people do this? Interested for your opinion cheers
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Hi I've had the same laptop for over 5 years(got it for my 18th) but in the last few months its been going so slow for even the simplest things like opening Word and Mozilla Firefox at the same time. Ive checked the processes, checked startup(msconfig) defraged and still the same Is it time for a reformat of the hard drive, how often do people do this? Interested for your opinion cheers
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Hi I've had the same laptop for over 5 years(got it for my 18th) but in the last few months its been going so slow for even the simplest things like opening Word and Mozilla Firefox at the same time. Ive checked the processes, checked startup(msconfig) defraged and still the same Is it time for a reformat of the hard drive, how often do people do this? Interested for your opinion cheers
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Time for a new OS I say :)
xacc.ide - now with TabsToSpaces support
IronScheme - 1.0 alpha 4a out now (29 May 2008) -
Yeah it is an old machine, used whilst at Uni but I want to keep it going for another year. Running on XP at the moment 512kb 30gb hard drive :)
.netman wrote:
512kb
[Insert joke about low memory/typo]
Simon
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Hi I've had the same laptop for over 5 years(got it for my 18th) but in the last few months its been going so slow for even the simplest things like opening Word and Mozilla Firefox at the same time. Ive checked the processes, checked startup(msconfig) defraged and still the same Is it time for a reformat of the hard drive, how often do people do this? Interested for your opinion cheers
Well, first of all: Use a decent defragmenting tool like O&O Defrag, which is blazingly fast (500% defrag time reduction in my case) and does a much better job at defragmenting even large files with a large number of fragments. After that, if problems persist, install additional memory. You can either use an existing expansion slot, or if none is available, try to reach the builtin memory, and swap it out. Go for at least 1 GB (2 would be better). If this doesn't remedy you problems (insert a joke about "Remedy being the problem"), you should seriously consider reinstalling Windows. First, however, you should build yourself a slipstream Install-CD. If you don't know how to create one, or you deem that too cumbersome, just download a firewall installer and put it on a CD along with all the required drivers, to be installed right after Windows has been installed and BEFORE the computer is connected to a network. That way, you have all drivers on-hand and won't expose a virgin system to the net. As for your other question: I usually reinstall twice a year. However, I am using WXP on a machine that hasn't changed much, so I am just replaying my image.
Cheers, Sebastian -- "If it was two men, the non-driver would have challenged the driver to simply crash through the gates. The macho image thing, you know." - Marc Clifton
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Hi I've had the same laptop for over 5 years(got it for my 18th) but in the last few months its been going so slow for even the simplest things like opening Word and Mozilla Firefox at the same time. Ive checked the processes, checked startup(msconfig) defraged and still the same Is it time for a reformat of the hard drive, how often do people do this? Interested for your opinion cheers
i know people that format once a week at least :doh: i on the other hand hate it to get my stuff installed back etc so i normally only format for stuff like major hardware upgrades(motherboard & CPU) or if the OS is really screwing around like booting taking over 5mins. i use tools like registry mechanic to keep my OS clean of BS that slows down the OS after a while
Harvey Saayman - South Africa Junior Developer .Net, C#, SQL
you.suck = (you.passion != Programming) -
Hi I've had the same laptop for over 5 years(got it for my 18th) but in the last few months its been going so slow for even the simplest things like opening Word and Mozilla Firefox at the same time. Ive checked the processes, checked startup(msconfig) defraged and still the same Is it time for a reformat of the hard drive, how often do people do this? Interested for your opinion cheers
Have you tried running some maintenance app, like Tune Up Utilities?
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Hi I've had the same laptop for over 5 years(got it for my 18th) but in the last few months its been going so slow for even the simplest things like opening Word and Mozilla Firefox at the same time. Ive checked the processes, checked startup(msconfig) defraged and still the same Is it time for a reformat of the hard drive, how often do people do this? Interested for your opinion cheers
I usually reformat my PC about every 3-4 months. I like to keep my PC clean as possible and I like to try a lot of product demos that always leave some trace behind when I uninstall them. This cleans them up like nothing else and the PC always seems a bit zippier after a fresh install. I do a lot of work and play quite a few games so I always keep backups of my saved information on another hard drive so I won't lose them. Most of this information though would fit on a decent sized flash drive so you may consider that if you do a reformat.
Brett A. Whittington Application Developer
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Have you tried running some maintenance app, like Tune Up Utilities?
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Hi I've had the same laptop for over 5 years(got it for my 18th) but in the last few months its been going so slow for even the simplest things like opening Word and Mozilla Firefox at the same time. Ive checked the processes, checked startup(msconfig) defraged and still the same Is it time for a reformat of the hard drive, how often do people do this? Interested for your opinion cheers
I never have to re-format. When I set up a computer, I install the OS (slipstreamed and slimmed down with nLite), install all basic apps I always need and then make a Ghost image from this installation. I can always revert to this which saves me the trouble of customizing everything every time. I also have images which are created after the initial install which contain more applications (like Visual Studio, MS Office) and customizations so I can revert to these as well.
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It's not free. Maybe there are similar tools which are... They have a 30 days trial though: http://www.tune-up.com/download/[^]
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Hi I've had the same laptop for over 5 years(got it for my 18th) but in the last few months its been going so slow for even the simplest things like opening Word and Mozilla Firefox at the same time. Ive checked the processes, checked startup(msconfig) defraged and still the same Is it time for a reformat of the hard drive, how often do people do this? Interested for your opinion cheers
I generally don't do a reformat. I use Crap Cleaner a lot - removes all the orphaned registry entries and gets rid of the temporary files on the disk, etc. I also defrag every few months (any more than that is a waste). You might also check out the black viper's website - it tells a lot of the services that you can turn off and get some performance improvement that way. Also check your swap file sizes and make sure they are at least twice the size of your RAM too. If you do a reformat, I would suggest getting a larger hard disk and more RAM. Then create a virtual machine for use when you want to install trial software, etc. and snapshot it. Then, you can just revert to the snapshot anytime you want to wipe out the trials, etc. VMWare is the most popular, but it costs money (the workstation version). Sun's VirtualBox seems to work pretty well, although it doesn't yet support 64 bit guests. Virtual PC is OK too, but last I checked, it didn't support USB in the guests.
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Hi I've had the same laptop for over 5 years(got it for my 18th) but in the last few months its been going so slow for even the simplest things like opening Word and Mozilla Firefox at the same time. Ive checked the processes, checked startup(msconfig) defraged and still the same Is it time for a reformat of the hard drive, how often do people do this? Interested for your opinion cheers
.netman wrote:
I've had the same laptop for over 5 years(got it for my 18th) but in the last few months its been going so slow for even the simplest things
The last laptop I worked on for a friend had this same symptom. The HDD died a few hours later.
"Love people and use things, not love things and use people." - Unknown
"To have a respect for ourselves guides our morals; to have deference for others governs our manners." - Laurence Sterne
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.netman wrote:
I've had the same laptop for over 5 years(got it for my 18th) but in the last few months its been going so slow for even the simplest things
The last laptop I worked on for a friend had this same symptom. The HDD died a few hours later.
"Love people and use things, not love things and use people." - Unknown
"To have a respect for ourselves guides our morals; to have deference for others governs our manners." - Laurence Sterne
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Hi I've had the same laptop for over 5 years(got it for my 18th) but in the last few months its been going so slow for even the simplest things like opening Word and Mozilla Firefox at the same time. Ive checked the processes, checked startup(msconfig) defraged and still the same Is it time for a reformat of the hard drive, how often do people do this? Interested for your opinion cheers
I create an image of my hard drive after I reformat and install all the essentials. My documents and user profile reside in a different partition. If something messes up, I can always restore the image and have all my files intact.
So the creationist says: Everything must have a designer. God designed everything. I say: Why is God the only exception? Why not make the "designs" (like man) exceptions and make God a creation of man?
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Hi I've had the same laptop for over 5 years(got it for my 18th) but in the last few months its been going so slow for even the simplest things like opening Word and Mozilla Firefox at the same time. Ive checked the processes, checked startup(msconfig) defraged and still the same Is it time for a reformat of the hard drive, how often do people do this? Interested for your opinion cheers
Don't reformat, first get rid of *all* the temp files that windows creates in your user temp folder and in the windows temp folder. 99.99% of the time when a windows computer becomes slow that is the primary reason. I have batch files that clean them out automatically every night, it makes a *huge* difference and takes about 2 minutes to try before you go and do something drastic. This is what most of the clean up utilities do anyway.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson