Computer Questions for those that know

[gm280]

Okay, I will confess up front. I am in no way any computer expert and I didn't stay in a Holiday Inn last night either. But I do have a few questions before buying a new laptop. First off, how can you tell if your computer is the problem, or the router/modem (one unit), or actual cable link? Here is what I have done thus far. I have done a few speed tests with the usual speed test links and one will state that I have great connections with medium upload and download speeds (20-30mbps most of the time, but not always). The other states I have sorry connections (5-8mbps) not even close to what I am paying for from the cable link. So how do I actually tell which is correct?

Here is my usual problem. When I log on each morning, I usually scan the local news groups and then end up here on iboats. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour. And with certain links, as soon as I link up, the site responds with "link stopped working" messages. And I can't get anything to work other then closing the computer out of that dead non-working site and reinitiating again. The back arrow doesn't work and neither does the refresh key. Then some other sites are sort of okay, but slow and nothing to write home about. And then others seem fairly responsive. And some times I can minimize the screen and maximize it again and it starts working for a while. So again, how do I tell if it is my laptop, the site, the router/modem, the cable company, or what? Some days ever place I link to stops work on me nearly instantly.

My present laptop is about four years old and obviously not a modern high speed setup. But this is getting really old. It originally didn't do such things, but then the cable company may not have had as many customers sharing the cable links either. So I am wondering, do I need to buy new, or what? :help:

I can try things if anybody has any suggestions. But mind you I am certainly not computer savvy either. So any ideas have to be spelled out really simple.

I did take the computer apart and clean everything. There was a lot of dust in the CPU radiator section where the fan cools things and I cleaned all that out. I also clean the CPU heat-sink area and applied new fresh Artic Grease back (thermal grease compound) on the CPU heat-sink again. No change.

Any ideas? :noidea:

And one last thing. This is a Dell INSPIRON N5010 laptop with 300GB hard drive and 6GB RAM 2.4GB i3 CPU Core, running Windows 7 SP-1 with 64-bit operating system.

 

[bruceb58]

Download Process Explorer and see what's running in the background hogging up your resources.

In your command window, type msconfig and see what is getting loaded up at Startup. You can remove all of the programs at startup to see if things improve. If it does, start adding them back in to see which one is the culprit.

Also, make sure you have at most one anti-virus program running.

BTW 5-8Mbps is plenty fast for surfing. That is not your issue.

In the end, sometimes it's worthwhile to do a clean install of the OS.

 

[bruceb58]

I am sure Rick HT32BSX115 is going to come in and tell you you should switch to Linux!

 

[southkogs]

In the end, sometimes it's worthwhile to do a clean install of the OS.

^^^^ that's a favorite move of mine. Every couple of years (sometimes even every year) I wipe my entire drive and reinstall completely. Due to how much I do on my computer, I'm pre-set for that sort of thing ... but it's been worth it to make machines run MUCH nicer.

 

[bruceb58]

Every couple of years (sometimes even every year) I wipe my entire drive and reinstall completely.

It's also why I make an image of my drive after an install and I have all my programs loaded up. Makes a reinstall a piece of cake.

 

[GA_Boater]

Down load CCleaner Freefrom here and after installing, run the Cleaner and the Registry cleaners.

Run Analyze and Run Cleaner under the Cleaner option. This could take a while. If it says that a browser need to be closed to clean the files, close it.

Then run the Registry cleaner option, then Scan and then Fix. You might need to run the Registry Scan and Fix a few times until it scans clean.

No idea if this will make much difference, but it cleans up your PC and gets rid of a lot of software and Windows junk overhead.

What browser, GM?

 

[MTboatguy]

5-8 mps is not that bad, but it sounds like your cable company may be having some latency problems with their signal., it also sounds like you have quite a bit of stuff running in the background that is not allowing the resources to be released correctly.

 

[boatman37]

agreed on CCleaner. run it about once a month or so. you are usually ok leaving the default settings and also run the registry cleaner that comes with it. that should make a difference. let us know how it is after that. and as was said, check your msconfig. if you aren't sure if a service or process should be running then ask google

 

[tpenfield]

You could buy another laptop, or you could just fix what you have.

Windows generally slows down with age. You could run the 'cleaners' that have been recommended, but I have found that a re-install on a several year old computer can be better. You could do what is referred to as a 'repair install' of windows. Essentially it lays down a new operating system without having to reload all of the programs. The process is a bit different for the versions of windows, but you could google a few how-to's on that for win7.

There is always windows 10 that you could go to as well and your PC should have the power to run it.

 

[gm280]

Well thanks so very much for the multiple responses from everybody. I thought this was going the way of the file 13. But seems I have a lot to consider. I have to add a little bit more info to hopefully narrow things down some.

I never ever get a "site stopped working" here on iboats. In fact this site works pretty much without issues for me. And that makes me really wonder why other sites are giving me issues. Next is when I received this laptop as a Christmas present year ago, I didn't get any software to use as backup. Meaning I would love to rebuild this computer but I don't have any of the OS software. Would this be a great opportunity to go with Windows 10 now/ ;noidea:

I do have a complete backup of all my files from the library sections (documents, music, pictures and videos). I do backups throughout the year and so none of that would be lost. But everything else would be that I presently don't have the install disks for. But that is basically the OS Windows 7, or Windows 10, if I go that route.

If I elect to rebuild this laptop, and I know it surely could use it for sure, I need to know the absolute steps so I can print them out before giving this a try. Otherwise, I will probably not be responding to much of anything here on iboats. I know that seems very tempting to a lot of folks. But that would be what would happen if I really screw the build up.

So what should I do? Oh, I have down loaded CCleaner and ran that for a while, but I didn't see any register fix with it. I since removed it thinking It could be causing the problems. I do have two other security programs running. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Symantec Anti-Virus. So I guess that covers those issues. So should I rebuild now, and if so how do I go about that?

 

[southkogs]

... and Symantec Anti-Virus.

I have a slight advantage as a Mac user with anti-virus, so I haven't run Symantec in a while. HOWEVER, the last time I was running that anti-virus it was chewing up all kinds of system resources. I wound up dropping it for another AV (and I can't recall which). You may want to disable that for an hour or so on the web and see what kind of change that brings about.

What OS are your running GM?

 

[southkogs]

It's also why I make an image of my drive after an install and I have all my programs loaded up...

... which I should be doing, but haven't done

 

[bruceb58]

I would not be running both of those AV programs at the same time. Some people may disagree since the Malwarebytes isn't a true ant-virus program but it certainly doesn't help matters.

If you were going to reload an OS, you would need to get all the drivers from the manufacturer. This should not be an issue.

 

[boatman37]

bruce beat me to it. if you have multiple A/V or malware scanners running in the background it will really kill your PC. the free version of malwarebytes does not scan real-time, meaning it is an on-demand scanner so it shouldn't be interfering unless it id the paid version. not sure about the other malware tool you have.

 

[rogerwa]

Here is one option - one that worked well for me.. I took the upgrade to win10. With that MS stores profile info on your hardware as a key so that you don't need any product key to reload the OS. So I backed up my data to a network connected USB drive and upgraded to win10. I then replaced my HD with an SSD drive ( really easy to do) and reloaded a fresh copy on the SSD drive. I had a deal through work to get a fresh copy of office 10 for like $10.

I now have a totally refreshed system with new office. Everything has been working very well and the fresh load got rid of any remnant of preload or bloatware.

 

[notlef]

Dell machines come with a restore image partition off in the hardrive. I would just back up any data you want to keep and restore the machine to factory settings. Then update to Windows 10 if the bios will support it.

 

[gm280]

Dell machines come with a restore image partition off in the hardrive. I would just back up any data you want to keep and restore the machine to factory settings. Then update to Windows 10 if the bios will support it.

That actually sound like what I was planning to do. I didn't know that booting to factory settings would reload the computer to initial setup. But if that will work, I can do that and then load Windows 10. Sounds like a doable plan to me. Thanks!

 

[bruceb58]

My suggestion...stay with Windows 7.

 

[southkogs]

My suggestion...stay with Windows 7.

2nd that. :thumb:

 

[GA_Boater]

3rding W7..

You can backup the computer, restore to factory default from the Windows image all Dells have, unless you removed it andthen restore programs and files. Program restoration is really re-installation of the programs. The files are simply a copying back onto the PC.

If you do backup, don't use any back up programs. Use copy and paste of directories. If you use a backup program the PC will be restored with all the problems you have now and the only difference is the hard drive will be defragmented.

Before copying any directories, Use the CCleaner program to remove all the junk files. Windows saves copies of every thing