I Have a Slow Netbook...

[StrawberrySmiles]

Less than 5 years ago I was gifted a netbook by my boyfriend, because he thought me saying "that's cute" means "I want it".

Recently it's been very slow. I've uninstalled many games, removed many files, stopped Dropbox and Skype from starting up, deleted temp files, and deleted cookies. Using Paint.NET takes 5 minutes to open and save/close. Sometimes it "doesn't respond".

I use Firefox, which also gives me "no response" a lot and script not responding. Chrome isn't much better.

So... Any ideas..? Are there other layering image editing software or internet browsers that would work better? Need any more information?

 

[Zalerinian]

I assume that it didn't use to be this slow, and started happening gradually? You may want to run a virus scan on the system to make sure you haven't picked up anything you don't want. I'd recommend MalwareBytes, it's very good at remove malware and other greyware.

 

[Nirwanda]

I have the same issues on my aging comp. Do you have any program that cleans your computer of junk files like Ccleaner, Tuneup Utilities or Advanced System Optimizer? They do help somewhat to alleviate poor performance.

With that said, I always though Paint.net was pretty lightweight; Graphicsgale is one alternative to it, though I don't know if it's actually lighter, another one is IDRAW (It's not just for characters, despite what the pictures suggest).

There are several lightweight browsers, but their limited functionality makes them less than ideal choices. Nonetheless, you might want to take a look at at this:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-web-browser-lightweight.htm

 

[Ralpf]

Including what others have said, I would try to clean up the registry, I like Eusing Registry Cleaner for the job. Ccleaner which Nirwanda mentioned may do that, also.

 

[Andar]

Don't use any system optimizer programs unless you know exactly what you're doing - all those programs have an equal chance of comppletely ruining your system instead of accelerating it.


If the netbook is much slower than before, this means either a lot of background programs or too small free space on the hard drive - or that some of your windows files have been corrupted and aren't working correctly anymore. But without more info on it we can't point you to the correct solution.


How many GB is free on your C:-drive?

 

[Quxios]

If budget isn't a problem and if you don't have an ssd already, I would suggest getting one and turning your old hdd to an external.  Your hdd might be getting worn out already.  You might be able to wipe your current hard drive ( back up your files somewhere other then your hdd ) and do a clean install of a windows os, but if it's worn out not sure how long that would last.  Both of these options also require a windows os disk.

Terms, just incase:
sdd - Solid State Drive

hdd - Hard Disk Drive

os - Operating System

( When installing an os, you actually have a choice to keep your old files, and they will be stored in a "windows.old" folder, but I think a clean install would be better. )

 

[Eterne]

Do you do maintenance on your netbook regularly? If it happened gradually it's likely it's just bunged up. Of course, it also depends on specs - 5 years is a loooong time in the world of PC performance.
Adding to what others have said, CCleaner is a great utility. It should be rather risk-free for the non-expert, too. One clean on 35-wipe should leave your computer fast.
Although if you need something more drastic, my personal favourite is Restoration.
You'll need to leave it overnight or be okay with not using the computer for a day (it takes upwards of 6 hours, depending on drive size) but it shreds all your deleted files (when you delete through recycle bin, the files are hidden rather than deleted), which is what usually has caused slowness with any computer I've had.

 

[Zalerinian]

Well, as others have mentioned, there are many different aspects to computer speed.

As I mentioned, you may have gotten some unwanted software running in the background. This would be attributed to the background process part. These are processes you may not be able to see, since they may not put anything on the screen for you to see, but they still do something in the background.

As Andar and Quasi have mentioned, you may be running out of disk space. This is often the cause of severe slowdowns. Try to run a good disk cleanup program like CCleaner. Install the program, tell it what types of files you want to remove (be careful about the cookies in your web browsers, these are unlikely to take up much space, and are used for websites like RMW to remember that you're logged in. If you get rid of these, you'll need to log back into each website your previously told to remember you). You can also try running the built-in disk cleanup utility with Windows.

A lot of programs on the internet promise you that they'll help improve the speed of your computer, but many of these are actually malware themselves. Unless you know of a reputable company that is making this software, you should be skeptical. Even if it is a reputable company, things can get a little hairy when it's looking at the registry. The Windows Registry stores settings for Windows itself, as well as a majority of the software programs installed on your computer. You should be careful about making changes to the registry.

If all else fails and you still can't quite find out why it's slow, try to reinstall your operating system. Be sure to back up all your files, and then reinstall Windows, making sure to wipe everything off first.

Best of luck!

 

[Gothic Lolita]

For Firefox or Google Chrome a really low end PC is enough like: 

Spoiler

2 GB RAM
256 MB GraphiccardDual Core with 3 GHz / Quad Core with 1.5 GHz

For Paint.net you need a good one:

Spoiler

8 GB RAM

256 MB Graphiccard

Dual Core 3 GHz / Quad Core 1.5 GHz

I've running a huge variety of systems, that's how I can say what is good for what.
1 GB for a webbrowser is really to less these days. Your browser will get slow and the picture will move jumping.
And Paint.net doesn't even really work with 6 GB if you go on setting like 10k pixel sizes. Then you need 8 GB
For Full HD, 4 GB RAM are enough.

For clean up your HDD, I will recommend Tune Up, because it does everything for you and no configuration needed. All with a simple one click.
Every option it tells you to delete, is okay, because it really only lists unnecessary files.

CCleaner is good, but you need to know what you are actually deleting, or else your windows will stop starting. :/ (\s/)

And for the HDD, I once only had 1GB / 300 GB free and the system was still at full speed.
Only the defragmentation didn't work anymore. :/ 
Because it needs 20% free space. /)

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

It could be the age of your comp,


The disk might be fragmented too much,


Some hardwares might be not function as well as they did (age)


Some software running in the background,


Malwares or viruses


and so on...


Also, I do advise doing a registry modification only as a last thing to do. It might do more harm than good.

 

[Zalerinian]

For Firefox or Google Chrome a really low end PC is enough like: 

Spoiler

2 GB RAM

256 MB Graphiccard

Dual Core with 3 GHz / Quad Core with 1.5 GHz

For Paint.net you need a good one:

Spoiler

8 GB RAM

256 MB Graphiccard

Dual Core 3 GHz / Quad Core 1.5 GHz

I've running a huge variety of systems, that's how I can say what is good for what.

1 GB for a webbrowser is really to less these days. Your browser will get slow and the picture will move jumping.

And Paint.net doesn't even really work with 6 GB if you go on setting like 10k pixel sizes. Then you need 8 GB

For Full HD, 4 GB RAM are enough

The only benefit more RAM has for paint.net is that you can work with more complex/bigger images. For web browsing you can have more tabs open at a time.

For clean up your HDD, I will recommend Tune Up, because it does everything for you and no configuration needed. All with a simple one click.

Every option it tells you to delete, is okay, because it really only lists unnecessary files.

That is terrible. You clearly have no idea what is a necessary file if you think a program is foolproof for you. True, it could be pretty good, but you can never be guaranteed that its only unnecessary files. Tell me, what is an unnecessary file? You can't expect a one-click solution to be perfect, there's a decent t chance that it could be deleting files you do want. If not, it is probably no better than the built-in disk cleanup utility.

CCleaner is good, but you need to know what you are actually deleting, or else your windows will stop starting. :/ (\s/)

What. ._. I have seen many people use CCleaner, I have used CCleaner. I have selected pretty much every option on there. It has never damage the operating system. I cannot image how you would get the idea it would damage it.

If there are any spelling mistakes, I am typing this on my phone.

 

[Gothic Lolita]

The only benefit more RAM has for paint.net is that you can work with more complex/bigger images. For web browsing you can have more tabs open at a time.

For me, I only opend Facebook and it had a huge lag in scrolling. In YouTube, I only could use 720p. That's my experience so far.

With the 4 GB RAM PC, I could do 1080p with the same connections.  

That is terrible. You clearly have no idea what is a necessary file if you think a program is foolproof for you. True, it could be pretty good, but you can never be guaranteed that its only unnecessary files. Tell me, what is an unnecessary file? You can't expect a one-click solution to be perfect, there's a decent t chance that it could be deleting files you do want. If not, it is probably no better than the built-in disk cleanup utility.

I can't tell that, but it cleared 45 GB of unnecessary Windows secures.

Then a hundreds of register files, that are no longer in use and many other.

Also it can clean the browser.

The Defragmentation is really good and the Registry Defragmentation speeded up my PC 7 seconds in booting. Got Windows 10 for information.

What. ._. I have seen many people use CCleaner, I have used CCleaner. I have selected pretty much every option on there. It has never damage the operating system. I cannot image how you would get the idea it would damage it.

I only tested it on the old XP PC, but after that incident, I never wanted to use it again. :/ (\s/)

 

[Zalerinian]

For me, I only opend Facebook and it had a huge lag in scrolling. In YouTube, I only could use 720p. That's my experience so far.

With the 4 GB RAM PC, I could do 1080p with the same connections.

Yes, that was my ignorance. With web browsing RAM will allow you to have more on the screen, such as many images or higher resolution video. Facebook does have a lot of images and content. Youtube, obviously, uses a lot of RAM for it's videos.

I can't tell that, but it cleared 45 GB of unnecessary Windows secures.

Then a hundreds of register files, that are no longer in use and many other.

Also it can clean the browser.

The Defragmentation is really good and the Registry Defragmentation speeded up my PC 7 seconds in booting. Got Windows 10 for information.

Temporary files are abundant everywhere, including from your web browsers. Those hundreds of registry entries may very well be unused, but there's also a lot of entries that seem unused but continually appear. For example every time you tell CCleaner to clean up the registry, there are seemingly hundreds of ones labelled something like 'Unused ActiveX entry', and it then removes them. Scan again immediately after, however, and they're all back again.

Defragmentation is good, it makes it a bit faster to get access to larger files, and can speed up boot time.

Overall, there are plenty of good programs to help speed up your computer, but there are also significantly more programs that aren't going to help, and may end up damaging it. I just don't think you seem to understand what some of your programs are doing, and that is pretty bad. You should definitely try to understand what is happening with your computer.

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

Okies, I thought I'd update you all on what I've done!

Days before posting this I did stop many unnessary programs from starting up (like Skype or Dropbox), deleted unusued programs, well installed them.

Just now I used CCleaner and Malwarebytes. I also am trying a more lightweight browsers. Things seem to be improving, though of course, Paint.NET is *still* a bit slow.

I've recorded some basic information as well.

84.2 GB free -- C: Drive

Intel® Atom CPU N450 @1.66GH 1.67 GHz

Thanks for all the help and suggestions!

 

[Andar]

In most cases, I advise against tuneup programs of any kind, and especially against all registry cleaners, because it's almost impossible for any registry cleaner to work correctly.


The reason is that there are only three cases for a regular computer, and in all cases the best result for using a registry cleaner is that it doesn't do its job. Because a registry cleaner needs to know an entry to handle it correctly.


1) If you only have programs from the big companies, then the registry cleaner can know those registry entries - but in such cases you don't need a registry cleaner because the big companies know how to write their programs correctly.


If you use programs from smaller companies, then the registry cleaner will find registry entries it does not know - there is absolutely no way it can know every program from around the world. And then it can only guess wether it should erase the entry or not. So:


2) If the registry cleaner keeps unknown entries, then it doesn't do its job because unused entries will still slow the computer down.


3) If the registry cleaner deletes unknown entries, then it plays russian roulette with your computer - because if it deletes an entry that is still needed by the unknown program, then that program will fail to function.


The only way a registry cleaner can really work is when it has a registry tracker and you installed it as the first program after a clean format and reinstall of Windows, because then it can track which entry was done by what installation. In all other cases it's either useless or risking your computer stability.


About the netbook:


The Atom CPU's are slow CPUs optimized for low energy consumption. Your specific case is one of the last Atoms with singlecore, which means it's even worse than with more modern Atom-CPUs - consider your Atom 1.66 GHz to have about the same processing power as any regular Intel CPU @ 0.500 GHz (or 500 MHz).


And most programs need more power with any update - your slowdown is most probably due to added functions in the programs you use. The only way to speed it up again would be to go back to the older program versions of Firefox and similiar programs, and that would cause other problems like missing security updates and so on...

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

So... I'm doomed..? XD

I thought things were a bit faster, but not really. Still unresponsive scripts and random no responses. I'd like to write soon, however I'm afraid of opening up something like Word and really slowing things down.

Or losing my progress...

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

I guess so. Anyway, considering your laptop is already 5 years old, the time to replace it will probably come soon, if not now... Of course that depends on how you used it anyways. My old laptop which died recently lasted for about 5 years, and for maybe 4 years I've been running it for around more than 10 hours a day. Sometimes 24 hours during weekends.. At around 3 years, it already started showing some hardware failures aside from the huge slowdowns. 

and I've always found the old atoms to be not really good for anything but casual doc editing and browsing... even when their still new.

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

Too bad I have a terrible budget.

I wonder what I could do, so I can deal with game-making and writing. o.o

 

[Gothic Lolita]

How much would you have of budget?
And does it have to be a notebook or could it be a regular PC too? (\s/)
My PC is not bought in one. I only bought partial stuff. In total it's around 450€ / 550$.
But it's pretty much over the top. /)

 

[BoluBolu]

Don't use any system optimizer programs unless you know exactly what you're doing - all those programs have an equal chance of comppletely ruining your system instead of accelerating it.

True, long ago I messed up my registry because using several optimizer software without knowing what exactly it does, and then my system is broken down, I'm forced to reinstall my windows which is really nasty.