Skip to main content

Hewlett-Packard began manufacturing personal laptop computers in 1993.

3257 Questions View all

computer very slow and takes long to load any programs

my laptop has been running slow and takes over 30min to load any program. i need help please!!

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

Is this a good question?

Score 106
2 Comments

it has been 3 days since I opened it still not loaded

by

it has been 2 days it wont load

by

Add a comment

14 Answers

Chosen Solution

When was the last time your laptop had a virus scan or disk defragment? How about the deletion of un-needed programs that may be running the background?

My recommendation would be to do the following:

1: Uninstall undesired or unused programs (control panel>Install/uninstall programs). My general rule is that if I don't recognize the program name, I delete it. Do a restart when you are done here.

2: Defragment your hard drive. (Start menu>all programs> accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmentor>Defragment Disk). This operation can take a while so maybe make it an overnight process.

3: Try to download and install a well known virus scan program (like McAfee) and run it to make sure there aren't any obvious viruses on your computer. I would recommend uninstalling the program when you are done too, because they tend to take a fair amount of resources themselves.

If these don't work, you may try a full re-install of your OS or maybe even cleaning your laptop's internals. My old laptop ran super slow because it was over heating and it ran better after a quick clean.

There are many other potential suggestions but hopefully this is a good start!

Was this answer helpful?

Score 43

13 Comments:

have done this and still slow, no virus or anything and still doing the same... More to this problem than the same old answers that people repeat.. Thsi si not the problem must be deeper

by

And laptop is only 2 years old and I use a Nasdrive to back everything up also

by

Thank you for the advice. I had my laptop repaired for a broken screen and on getting it back with the screen fixed my laptop was taking a long time to load and i getting get into anything not even photos. Now my laptop is working. thank you again. much appreciated.

by

mybe there is bad sector in hard drive or there is broblem in bridge

by

I have a Kaspersky Internet Security install in my PC, everytime I switch on my computer the application takes time to load, what seems the problem?

by

Show 8 more comments

Add a comment

since you are using a windows machine (vista,xp .7,8,or windows 10 )there can be many issues but most will get cover by this -

remove all unwanted toolbar , unwanted programs and unwanted softwares

upgrade the ram and clear the junks and check for any updates pending or antivirus issues for more visit hp http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03... hope that helps

Was this answer helpful?

Score 13

4 Comments:

Did all that and still runs slow, for some unknown reason CPU is running at 78% all the time.

by

Open your task manager (ctrl Alt Del) to find out what is taking most of the CPU. Don't have any programs running while you check and look under the processes and details tabs. Use End Task to stop the item using up most of the CPU. If the computer keeps running then try a normal program to see if that speeds it up. If it is Runtime Broker then you need to find out what is using that. In the details tab you can right click on the item using much of the CPU time and end task or set priority to low or open file location to see what is running. Keep in mind that ending the task might not be permanent and may return after rebooting the computer.

by

Необходимо сказать и о двухпроцессорных персональных компьютерах Intel-2! Можно ставить два (2) процессора Intel! Материнки по мимо двух процессоров позволяют поставить оперативную память 256 Гб!!! Даже со слабой видеокартой такой ПК в переди планеты всей. Ведь недостающую видеопамять он возьмет из оперативной, а ее реально много! Intel-2 -Рулит.

by

Add a comment

Hi,

Making slow PCs faster is part of my daily grind so I have a lot of tips for you here. I may not expand on everything but if you Google whatever words or terms you're not sure of then you will find plenty of hits on them.

There's some good answers here already but to start with I would avoid registry cleaners, they benefit in no way for speed but do pose a risk breaking something. Also avoid any of these "speed up" programs that claim to take total care of your system, they can be ok but ultimately cost more system resources than is worth keeping them around for.

To start with, lets make sure there's no dodgy program on the PC.

Program cleanup

You're gonna wanna check out what programs you have so load up "Add/Remove Program" or "Program & Features". As I mentioned, remove any of these "Speed up" programs and remove any "Toolbars".

Pay attention to the "Publisher" column and any programs where you don't recognise the name of the program or the publisher, be suspicious of it. Typically if you Google the program name, if it's dodgy then you will get a lot of hits of people saying it's dodgy on sites such as "Should I remove it?" so you would then remove it.

Any entries which don't have a "Publisher" entry, be suspicious of and Google it.

Also, as far as your Anti-Virus goes, I have had good experience with a mix of Windows Defender, which is built into Windows 8-10, or Microsoft Security Essentials on 7, and Malware Bytes, the free version, very important. The paid version, which you're offered a trial of during install (don't accept) includes a real-time scanner which is common in almost every Anti-Virus program and having 2 or more real-time scanners on the go massively affects PC performance. The free version has only manual scan, it's a good idea to run this once in a while.

If you don't like Windows Defender, then I think at present Avast and Kaspersky are still excellent alternatives, I personally wouldn't touch McAfee. Just make sure you only use 1.

Virus scan

Ok, next you're gonna wanna run a full scan with Malware Bytes Free and whatever your preferred Anti-virus is, run the scans one after the other, not at same time. Remove or Quarantine whatever it finds, reboot your PC and repeat the process. Keep repeating the process until both scans come up clean, or they keep coming up with the same item/s.

If they are coming up with the same item/s, enable the default Administrator account by copy/paste or typing the following command into an administrative command (Right click command prompt or Powershell and choose "Run as administrator").

net user administrator /active:yes

Then reboot your PC into safe mode and log in as the default Administrator account. This is important because sometimes Virus's hide in a user's directory and so changing the user prevents it from running. Now run both your scans again, clean, reboot into Safe Mode again under Administrator and repeat. Hopefully the 2nd round of scans will come up clean. If they do, reboot normally, back into your own account, and then run the following command in an Administrative Command Prompt

net user administrator /active:no

To return things to the way they were.

OS corruption

If you're on Windows 8-10, these can all be prone to file system corruption which has a massive impact on performance, if you're on Windows 7 skip to SFC repair.

DISM repair

To run a DISM repair, open an administrative command prompt or Powershell (Right click command prompt or Powershell and choose "Run as administrator") and type or copy/paste the following command

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

This ensures your OS has a working backup to then repair files with during the next command. If it finds any bad files here, it will replace them with a working copy straight from Microsoft, so an internet connection is required.

Sometimes downloading the working files from MS fails, in those cases you will have to manually specify a source by adding the /source switch such as

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /Source:repairSource\install.wim

Where "repairSource\install.wim" is the location of your installation media (Windows 8/8.1/10 disc or disc image). For example

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /Source:D:\sources\install.wim

If you don't have your installation media, you can download a copy from Microsoft at

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software...

SFC repair

After running the DISM command, check the OS files by running the following command, also within an administrative command prompt

SFC /scannow

This command will scan your working OS's files, ensuring there's no corruption by replacing any bad files it finds with ones from the backup we just repaired. As the command finishes you will get one of 3 results.

"No corruptions were found" is good.

"Corruptions were found and repaired" is also good.

"Corruptions were found but unable to repair" not good. If this happens, run the command

CHKDSK /R

The PC will then ask for a reboot and will take anywhere from 30m to 4h+ to come back up. After reboot, run DISM command and then SFC command again and hope... Tis not fun fixing after this if SFC still fails.

Cleanup

Now for cleanup, the only program I would recommend is CCleaner Free, just the Cleaner part. You can leave all the default settings, except maybe untick "cookies" for whatever web browser you use. Personally I just cba logging into all my sites again, but up to you.

General tips

For a browser, I like Chrome best but would also recommend Firefox. Just avoid IE at all costs, it's so slow. I even dip into Edge now and again but also find this a little slow. Also check you're browsers Search and Home Page settings. Sometimes malicious programs change your search and home page settings which can open your system up to virus infections so make sure they're both set to something you trust.

If you're on Windows 8-10, do "Restart" your PC once in a while. With Windows 8-10, when you "Shut Down" your PC it doesn't actually fully shut down, Windows saves a small snapshot of what it had running prior to shutdown to make the boot up process quicker, so restarting your PC is the easiest and quickest way of letting Windows fully refresh itself. You can check your PC's uptime in Task Manager (Right click the clock, you will see Task Manager, then "Performance" tab)

Check how much space you have free on your C: drive, make sure it's at least 10% of the total volume of the drive.

Check how much Memory/RAM you have installed on your PC. If it's 2GB or less then it will struggle to multitask with modern programs as they simply expect a bit more these days. You can see how much RAM you have free in Task Manager. If it's full then the system will start getting very slow. You can view the "Processes" to see what's consuming your RAM

If you are on Windows 10, I'd also recommend you ensure you're on the latest version by running Windows Updates. The new versions do come with changes, but nothing that can't be gotten used to and it also comes with massive performance, reliability and security improvments.

If you're on Windows 8, upgrade to 8.1. As with Windows 10, this also comes with many improvements.

And that's about that. By this point, provided there hasn't been any major issues discovered, the machine should be behaving much better now. If there has been a major issue found, your options are to Google your way to a solution which, depending on the issue, can be not so bad or a nightmare. Sometimes, when all else fails, it's just time to backup your files and rebuild the machine. With Windows 8-10 it comes with a "Factory Reset" function built in which can be accessed via "Settings", specific location varies. Always make sure you have a backup of your files prior to doing this though.

p.s...... just realised this is from 2012.. Why is this top of the page? Haha. Oh well, if still on XP, GET A NEW PC! :P

Was this answer helpful?

Score 7

1 Comment:

Appreciate the professional instructions. As for the date? I often come across the same, where it was ask/answered years ago. With all the technology one would be confident in thinking this wouldn’t happen.

by

Add a comment

Before you do anything else, follow the instructions given below step by step and carefully: After you are finished with the process of cleaning your system and you still have the same problem, find someone knowledgeable and have him/her look into your "Strat up" programs file to prevent some programs from starting up with Windows. Bu he/she must know what he/she is doing. Otherwise take your machine to Best buy and have them do it for you, probably at a cost.

One more thing you need to do is to check and see if you have enough memory (RAM) installed in your PC and if you have anything less than 512, consider increasing it.

I hope this helps.

HOW YOU DO A THOROUGH SYSTEM CLEANUP on WinXP::

There are several way in doing it and if you haven’t done it for sometime, be prepared to spend about one hour on it.

One way is to: (a) while you are on the internet click on tools and then click on Internet options; on the window that opens, you will find three buttons “DELETE FILES”: “DELETE COOKIES” and “CLEAR HISTORY;” click on “DELETE FILES” first after you put a checkmark on the little square to the left of “DELETE ALL OFF LINE CONTENT” then click OK and wait for the process to finish. (b) Click on “DELETE COOKIES,” after the cookies process is finished, click on “clear history,” say yes or OK and close all windows by clicking OK. Now you are finished and your machine is supposed to be all cleaned up. However, you still have one more step to go to make sure that you hard drive is OK as well.

Click on start and then on “my computer” then right click on your “C” drive icon and then on “properties”; then click on the tab that says “tools;” and then click on the button “Check now.” On the massage that will open put a checkmark on the first little square and click Ok. Then say Yes to the message that will open. Go back to where you were and put a checkmark in the second little square, click OK and wait for the four-step process to finish. Close down all open windows and restart your machine. And wait for the process to finish and you see your desktop..

Now, while your are on your desk top, click “stat” - “All programs” - Accessories - “system tools” – “disk defragmenter,” click on disc defragmenter and when it opens make sure that your drive “C” is highlighted and click “Analyze;” Wait for the process to finish, close all open windows and you are done. Now, restart your computer and see how it behaves.

Now, do me a favor; Go to start, control panel; scheduled tasks, click on scheduled tasks to open and then click on help to learn how to schedule your machine to clean up itsself automatically and at least once a week.

Good luck

Was this answer helpful?

Score 3

1 Comment:

I need to get my laptop fix

by

Add a comment

Buy a drive ssd may speed up your computer with me, thanks to the computer immediately works better.

Was this answer helpful?

Score 3
Add a comment

In my case I run the windows in the safe mode and I use a tool (windows fix ) in a program called advanced system care and evrything goes right after that

Was this answer helpful?

Score 2

1 Comment:

Yes Advanced System Care Free is especially good for the novice user.

by

Add a comment

First check if the computer was infected with virus or malware. This is most likely the case.

Secondly, reboot the computer and see if the speed boosted up or not.

If everything is ok, then i recommend using a SSD on the laptop to replace the hard drive.

Was this answer helpful?

Score 2
Add a comment

Hi Patricia,

You don’t say what Operating System or computer you are using.

I had this slow down and high CPU usage on a couple of my W10 computers.

It turned out to be because some recent Winodws 10 updates (October/November 2018) got corrupted.

Running Advanced System Care Free or Tweaking.com’s Windows Repair in safe mode may fix it.

Was this answer helpful?

Score 1
Add a comment

Clean Install.

Never go to a website and download software just because someone told you to do that. It is very dangerous and you could just be making your problem worse, or, giving away sensitive personal details.

Windows is crap software and needs to be replaced every once in a while. It is a pain in the rear, but it will save countless hours waiting for a slow computer.

Good Luck

Was this answer helpful?

Score 0

1 Comment:

Poor advice. Telling someone to never download software people are recommended is serving only to spread unjustified fear. There are millions of active forum community members who do nothing but try to help and advice like this destroys their efforts. What you should have said it to be cautious and use trustworthy sources only.

Windows is no crap software. You try writing a piece of software yourself and see how close to get to something like an operating system. Of course it not perfect, but when humans aren't perfect and our ideals are constantly changing, of course it's not perfect. But as for your comment about needing replaced, with proper maintenance it should always run good. I've had both my windows installs for several years, no issues on either of them, and that's a trend I've maintained since Win XP days (excluding Vista and 8).

I wish people who didn't know what they were talking about would just shut their cake hole and stop spreading their paranoia to the uninformed.

by

Add a comment

Disable the non-Microsoft services which are running. Sometimes you will get a misbehaving service which slows everything down. Doing this has fixed several slow computers for me. Here's how to do this:

Run MSCONFIG. Go to the Services tab. Click the box to hide all Microsoft services. Once you have done that, all that will be showing will be the non-Microsoft services. Select all of them, then disable them. Click Apply, then restart the computer.

Are things better? If so, then one (or more) of the non-Microsoft services is the culprit. Re-enable them one at a time (rebooting each time you enable one), to see which one slows the computer down. (Use MSCONFIG to re-enable them.) If you find any which slow the computer down, re-disable them, and make note of which ones they are so that you won't inadvertently re-enable them in the future. Check them all; there may be more than one misbehaving service.

If disabling the non-Microsoft services didn't fix anything, go back into MSCONFIG and re-enable them all. You may need them running, because they may provide essential functionality, such as anti-virus monitoring.

Was this answer helpful?

Score 0
Add a comment

You will able to find out the reasons and solution after reading Microsoft blog.

Was this answer helpful?

Score 0
Add a comment

installed adaware free antivirus, done a full scan, 1 threat detected, bit mining, quarantined it, computer running normal,

Was this answer helpful?

Score 0
Add a comment

Could be hardware aging. Could be crap-tastic background programs. Could be the Flux Capacitor dying.

Was this answer helpful?

Score 0
Add a comment

for a very comprehensive speed up i do the following

  1. delete all unused or unwanted programs in the control panel

# run a free version of avast then a free version of ccleaner

  1. download driverpack and update all your drivers they also do a17gb offline version
  2. goto blackviper.com and using his guide stop all the services you dont want
  3. defrag the pc
  4. if after all of that your pc is still running bad you need a new pc or a new HDD

Was this answer helpful?

Score 0

2 Comments:

step 5 double check the startup on msconfig. i was trying everything to make a pc boot fast at work. Somewhow i missed windows defender and piconstartup disabled both and my pc went from 3 minutes to 8 seconds

by

Step 3 isn't required, and in fact quickens the wear down process for SSDs. Worth a mention.

Step 4 is almost never the case. An OS reinstall should be attempted long before a pc is replaced in its entirety. Would you simply replace your car if it wouldn't turn over but you knew it had plenty of fuel and good spark?

Step 2, viperblack.com seems to no longer exist.

And as for your driver downloader, every single one I've tried in the past has been not worth it. Either they lock the updates behind a pay wall, or they provide updates for the wrong components, or they just fill your system with malware. The one you have recommended looks decent on the face of it though, so I will defo be checking that out. Although, Windows have recently made agreements to allow better driver update delivery through regular old Windows Update.

by

Add a comment

Add your answer

patricia will be eternally grateful.
View Statistics:

Past 24 Hours: 4

Past 7 Days: 15

Past 30 Days: 106

All Time: 487,365