Thanks. Slowness wasn't the problem on my laptop, it was the behavior of the cursor, which turned out to be a problem with just one writing program. It was my older desktop that was so slow. I downloaded the system file checker and did the scannow, but it didn't do any good. I was told some corrupted files were repaired, but the computer is as slow as ever. I still have it just for emergency use.
Sorry, it must have been what my computer needed because it's fast again. Let me know if you find the fix for your computer. I'd like to know more ways to quicken my computer too.
You downloaded System File Checker? SFC is built into Windows. Downloading an SFC tool is throwing red flags for me. I'd make sure your anti-malware is up to date as well as it's definitions. Are you running Windows 10? If so, I'll post some screenshots of some non-intrusive steps that may point you in the right direction.
Well, I downloaded something because the SFC or whatever was on the desktop didn't do anything, the computer sent me to a site to download what I needed. What I downloaded allowed me to "scannow" and some corrupted files were repaired but it didn't do anything to get the computer back to anything like normal speed. Yes, I'm running Windows 10. If you have anything that will wake up my desktop, it will be much appreciated. My desktop is hardly overloaded, there are no games etc. on it, mostly just writing files, so I have no idea what has practically killed it.
Thanks, just tried it, but not "as administrator," as I don't know how to do that. I get this message: "Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges or the disk may be locked by another process. You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode and make sure the disk is unlocked." In the Windows start button menu, there was something followed by "(administrator)" but it's no longer there. There is Windows Power Shell, and when I click on that it takes me to safe mode and tells me to try the new tool at Install PowerShell on Windows, Linux, and macOS - PowerShell. Well that's where I went before to download Windows Power Shell (or whatever it was), and now it's telling me to do it again. Also on the menu are Windows Power Shell (x86), Windows Power Shell ISE, and Windows Power Shell ISE (x86). I don't know what that all means.
Man... if I were in your shoes I back up all my important files/folders/pics/songs/videos and just reinstall Windows 10 to factory new... I'd do a complete reformat/reinstall.
Well I posted above that it's mostly writing files on the desktop, but I forgot in saying that that all personal files have been removed already to my laptop. The desktop is just sitting there for emergency use, but there are a couple of writing programs on it that I want to retain. I'll see if I can find the steps to reinstall Windows, without losing the programs. Thanks.
That can be done too... It's just as easy. I remember with my last build, Windows 7, that I saved most of my stuff to external drives becasue I had to freaking reformat my computer every so often. I was too cheap to get good antivirus. But Windows 10 is different. You can fix it without any disks.
Are you an administrator on your PC? As mentioned above, "downloading" SFC sounds a bit fishy to me because its already built into Windows, specifically as a command in CMD or Powershell. Powershell is CMD x100 AND on steroids. However, like mentioned above, we need to run these in admin mode to really make sure we are getting everything out of it. Some components of an install, or in this case SFC repair need admin priv's to run properly. You need to Right-Click on Powershell (x86) and click "Run as Administrator" See this link for running programs as admin- https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/3436-run-administrator-windows-10-a.html (Side note, Tenforums is amazing, you can sign up and pop your questions there as well, they are very helpful) Now I would run SFC /scannow and DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /Restorehealth (separately of course) If there is any windows corruption, these will help fix those issues. If it says some files couldn't be repaired, you can run SFC scan again. If it cant repair it after two passes, its fine. There is a CBS log that can help us find out what is wrong and if its relevant. On your keyboard, press and hold Windows Button + R and then paste thiis in and click "ok" -- %windir%\Logs\CBS folder Post the CBS.log file here and I can check to see if its relevant. (This will not contain any personal info, passwords or anything like that) Also, I would make sure all of your drivers are up to date. Luckily Dells have a program called "Dell Command Update" that is great for finding any and all drivers connected to your pc, including docking stations and sometimes printers, mouse/keyboard etc. Click this link to download - Challenge Page (You may need to uninstall Dell Support Assistant to install this program, which is completely fine.) Now you need to verify we arent dealing with low disk space - Check your C drive and make sure you have plenty of space available. Press and hold the Windows button + E - this will take you to File Explorer, notate how much space is available on your C: Drive At this point you can run Chk Disk as mentioned above (making sure to use the "Run As Administrator" instructions above while opening Command prompt. See instructions here: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/40734-drive-error-checking-windows-10-a.html (Rick above mentions Option 3 - running this via command prompt) Now since there seems to be odd behaviors, we can start a cleanup I would download and run CCLeaner and Malwarebytes at a minimum. Now I havent been in the malware cleanup game for a while but there are plenty of tools out there to help. Malware bytes is pretty good at removing pretty much everything and is a good companion (and cheap) to either a paid Anti Virus or Windows 10 Built in anti-virus (with common sense, Windows 10 built in anti virus is fine). CCleaner - Thanks for downloading CCleaner Malwarebytes - Thank you for downloading Malwarebytes for Windows | Malwarebytes If it were me, I'd run a few more things like cleaning up startup files with Autoruns or something like that but that is starting to get a bit more advanced. If you could post a picture of recent installs and startup programs that may help us get rid of some of those as well to help the PC. Recent Installations - Press Windows Button + R and type appwiz.cpl - Post a screen shot of your latest installations (going back to when the issue started) Startup Programs - Press Windows Button + R and type taskmgr then show us what it says in Startup (see below) Now I realize, this may be extremely difficult for someone that doesnt do anything on a PC other than word. To me this is about 10 minutes monday morning (minus scan time) I would be happy to take a look at your PC sometime if you are comfortable with downloading Teamviewer and allowing me to connect.
Nice writeup! I'd be interested in seeing his performance at startup vs when the slowness is occurring, and that's if they are different. I'm betting there is a bottleneck somewhere. On super slow boxes, especially older ones, I've seen a good bit of them bottleneck at the disk. (I run NVMe, personally. I don't think I'll ever have that problem ) An easy, quick peak would be to open task manager and look at the percentages on the Processes tab. If any of them seem high, say you have Memory at %85 for example, that doesn't leave much room for other memory-intensive tasks. Going with the memory example, if you click Memory to sort them descending, you should be able to see what the most memory intensive applications are. If you have one at say 60%, I'd start looking at why that app is hogging up all the memory. From there, once you've identified the process and what it does, you can start trouble shooting it. Whether it's killing it and checking for stability/improvement, or patching/upgrading that app/process to see if fixes for it include fixes that make more efficient use of memory. Another helpful screenshot would be hitting the Windows key and typing msinfo32 and hitting enter. The window it opens contains some helpful info on the box's specs.
Wow. That's a lot to digest. Thanks, I'll see what I can do with it. I'm reluctant to actually uninstall and reinstall Windows because I don't want to risk losing the browsers with access to my email accounts. Ability to access the email accounts is the main reason I'm holding on to the desktop in case something happens to the laptop. Thanks again.
It's slow from the start. When I turn on the computer, it takes about a minute for the sign-in box to appear. When I sign it, it takes a half minute or so for the start screen to appear. It the takes half a minute or more for the icons to appear on the tool bar. And when I click on File Explorer, it takes half a minute or more to open. Same with a browser. And the "Documents Shortcut" is no faster.
@gatorchamps0607 section on startup apps is pertinent here. I'm thinking one of your startup apps is a resource hog and is slowing down the whole system. When you log in, I'd open task manager and watch these percentages in the Processes Tab. If any are getting close to 100%, click the percentage and this will sort them. You want to sort them descending and make note if there are any that stand out.
Thanks. I went to task manager, clicked on "View system resource usage," and it says "There are no running apps." Could simply age have anything to do with the slowness? I bought this desktop about 8 years ago. Or could it be just the fact that it's a Dell computer?
Sometimes there's an advanced (or More Details) button when you open Task manager, that opens the whole Task manager. It could also be that it's old. If it had a bottom of the basement CPU when it was new 8 years ago, and has like 2GB of RAM, then yeah, it's going to be slow. Running msinfo32 will shine more light on the hardware. We are a HP site and have contracts with HP so I don't have a ton of experience with them, but I did like the few DELL servers I've worked on.
