Registry cleaner

[roadster]

I agree with the previous comments about Norton causing more problems than it solves. If you feel that additional antivirus software is needed try the home version of Sophos, its free and not too intrusive.

Improving the disk is a good suggestion and you should aim to have it no more than 50% full if possible. You don't say what version of windows is installed but as various patches and changes are rolled out the memory footprint always gets bigger and bigger and memory (ram) which was adequate a decade ago is often not enough. I would recommend a minimum of 8 GB if possible. If your laptop uses two ddr3 modules they should be 4GB each and these can be obtained for very little money. After the laptop has booted and settled down task manager should show at least 50% free memory if it has less than this active programs will constantly page to disk and the system will be unresponsive. Finally check that airways are free and not clogged with dust because an overheating processor will automatically slow down to protect itself.

[Count Steer]

Thanks all. I plan to roll my sleeves up this pm and park all the data stuff on a back up disk, uninstall anything that doesn't get used, remove Norton, dump any old Windows installation debris etc and run a disk clean up/defrag etc.

The point about Windows getting more resource hungry is a good one too. I'll check the m/c spec. It was the dog's danglies at the time but things move on. I suspect it will end up as a DVD player and MS Office only m/c.

I may end up having a play around, fitting an SSD if they're as cheap as mentioned...might even go Linux...

[KungFooBob]

https://www.ebuyer.com/1535249-patriot- ... 210s256g25

You'll find cheaper on Amazon, etc...

[mangocrazy]

Some years ago I discovered a very handy (and free) tool to graphically display the size of directories and files - it's called WinDirStat (Windows Directory Statistics) and is available here: https://windirstat.net/.

This is a screenshot of my C:/ drive:

WinDirStat.JPG (452.54 KiB) Viewed 470 times

You can have hours of fun deleting unnecessary files based on size and can render your system totally borked in doing so...

[Count Steer]

Well. I've made a start. Norton is uninstalling.

WRT the RAM it's got 12Gb. It's an Intel Core i5-6200.@ 2.2GzHz (and NVIDIA Geforce GTX graphics). The HD has currently got 135Gb in use and 782Gb empty. It's Windows 10 Home (build 22H2).

On to phase 2....

[mangocrazy]

The HD has currently got 135Gb in use and 782Gb empty.

Is that all on one logical drive (i.e. C:/) or do you have multiple logical drives?

[Cousin Jack]

Watching with interest. My i7 laptop is slowing too, and needs a good sort out. No Norton though. Disk is a bit of mess, it was delivered with 1 version of Windows, and with a code to update to a later version.

[Count Steer]

The HD has currently got 135Gb in use and 782Gb empty.

Is that all on one logical drive (i.e. C:/) or do you have multiple logical drives?

Just the one logical drive in the m/c. I have an external b/u drive. A Samsung 2Tb spinny disk but have ordered an external SSD for b/u of this and the HP tower.

[KungFooBob]

You want a nice NAS (with some kind of RAID redundancy) for backing up multiple machines

[Count Steer]

You want a nice NAS (with some kind of RAID redundancy) for backing up multiple machines

None of this stuff is business critical any more. I'll back up to the SSD (for speed) and do a leisurely copy of that onto one of the many external drives I have.

At least it's all simpler than when I had a tape streamer.

(Or Zipdisks).

[mangocrazy]

The HD has currently got 135Gb in use and 782Gb empty.

Is that all on one logical drive (i.e. C:/) or do you have multiple logical drives?

Just the one logical drive in the m/c. I have an external b/u drive. A Samsung 2Tb spinny disk but have ordered an external SSD for b/u of this and the HP tower.

If it were me, I'd always have my OS and programs on a different logical drive to my data. That way if the worst happens and you need to trash the OS and start again your data is safe and separate. I have separate logical drives for General (Documents, Downloads), Music and Photos. Of course if the physical disk shits its pants, no amount of logical separation will help.

[Count Steer]

Is that all on one logical drive (i.e. C:/) or do you have multiple logical drives?

Just the one logical drive in the m/c. I have an external b/u drive. A Samsung 2Tb spinny disk but have ordered an external SSD for b/u of this and the HP tower.

If it were me, I'd always have my OS and programs on a different logical drive to my data. That way if the worst happens and you need to trash the OS and start again your data is safe and separate. I have separate logical drives for General (Documents, Downloads), Music and Photos. Of course if the physical disks shits its pants, no amount of logical separation will help.

In a sense that's how I use the external 1Tb drive(s) - routinely copy everything from data on C: to dated folders on the external deleting the earliest one each time (I even used to keep a copy of the copy - just in case, but a lot of stuff ie photos is in the cloud now). If the C: drive did lunch itself, I wouldn't lose sleep. (It's mainly spreadsheets and documents).

(As you may gather, I did once have a drive suddenly and catastrophically fail...that kind of thing stays in mind quite a long time ).

[mangocrazy]

Yes, it only needs to happen once and it's seared into your memory. I guess the advent of 'the cloud' has eased a lot of concerns over backups, as that responsibility is now someone else's. But as my strapline will attest, I'm no fan of 'the cloud' and prefer to keep my friends close but my data closer...

[Count Steer]

Yes, it only needs to happen once and it's seared into your memory. I guess the advent of 'the cloud' has eased a lot of concerns over backups, as that responsibility is now someone else's. But as my strapline will attest, I'm no fan of 'the cloud' and prefer to keep my friends close but my data closer...

Yeah. Photos is one thing, finance spreadsheets are quite another.

(Currently in the process of ditching Photoshop.....).

[Count Steer]

LOL. One thing slowing me down while I did all this was......Windows was updating....again.

Currently running all the utilities in Disk Clean Up inc the 'tidy up old Windows installs'.

Have gone from 49% memory usage on Task Manager down to about 23% but some of that was down to the updater. Defender seems to be the biggest resource hog now. It's definitely running better. I'll reboot and see how things go. There's not actually much left on it. I guess Windows has bloated a fair bit since 10 was installed. There is an option somewhere to do a clean install/update rather than keep running with a patched version but, tbh, for the use it gets - it'll do.

[Count Steer]

It now starts from scratch in an acceptable time. At 'rest' the CPU is running at 1%, 37% memory usage and the disk is running at ~1% as the Google and M$ cloud services monitor to see if anything needs uploading.

Happy with that....for now.

[the_priest]

www.crucial.com/uk for the SSD hard drive. You can download their version of Acronis for free to clone the laptop over. You will need a usb drive caddy to do that. Prices are now very acceptable and it does make a huge difference to the performance of the system. Just worth doing. I've done several laptops from spinning disk to SSD and it is a big step up. Even better is NVME drives if you have that capability on the system. That is properly quick!

[Count Steer]

www.crucial.com/uk for the SSD hard drive. You can download their version of Acronis for free to clone the laptop over. You will need a usb drive caddy to do that. Prices are now very acceptable and it does make a huge difference to the performance of the system. Just worth doing. I've done several laptops from spinning disk to SSD and it is a big step up. Even better is NVME drives if you have that capability on the system. That is properly quick!

Thanks, I'd been looking at Crucial drives. It's not a brand I know. Also wondering how you go about cloning a non-usb drive so the caddy tip is

I think NVME would be a bit 'new wine in old skins' for this laptop.

[roadster]

The spec. of your laptop is higher than I was anticipating so it sounds like you have everything in hand. Does windows update tell you that your machine is windows 11 compatible? If so I would personally be tempted to buy a Windows 11 professional licence via a legitimate internet seller ( circa £20 ) and do a complete reinstall on a new ssd. That way you can retrieve or save any data on the existing drive using a caddy or another computer with a free sata slot.

Another observation is that users often clutter up the desktop with many saved files and other odds and ends. This does reduce the responsiveness of windows explorer and it is much better to only put shortcuts to folders on the desktop if possible.

[MrLongbeard]

Windows 11 professional licence

Why go pro over consumer license?