Extremely slow laptop?

[KRUSTY]

My daughter has a laptop - about 2 years old - and it takes an absolute age to do anything. She defrags ragularly, deletes temporary files and runs regular virus checks but nothing seems to help. Now she is talking about re-setting the factory settings - good idea or bad? Any suggestions. TIA.

[rojash]

You haven't mentioned the spec. A lot of laptops are slooooooww....

[Rob K]

Many things can cause this. If she has XP, then you really need AT LEAST 512MB of RAM or more. PC World (UK) offer a discount if you reserve it on-line and then pick it up in store. If the laptop has 256MB, I would recommend putting in an additional 512MB to make it up to 768MB. My sister's laptop runs much faster now with 768MB and it is a Celeron 1.4GHz.

Run CCleaner and Ad-Aware to get rid of spyware and other bots that can significantly reduce the system performance.

[rodz]

KRUSTY
Do you mean it`s slow generally or when on the web or email. I agree with everything that has just been said.
I have just changed my server from Orange to Sky.
The Sky deal is good (if it works). I was paying �45.00 a month for my Sky Package. I am now paying �45.00 for the same Sky Package plus free telephone calls anytime to Europe as well and free broadband, unfortunately the broadband is pretty bad.
Sky have admitted they have took on to many new customers on the "deal" and the exchange can`t cope.
I can`t get anywhere near the download speed relevent to my package, plus 30 year old phones lines and along way from the exchange.
Don`t forget some popular sites get a lot of traffic at certain times and this makes it slower.
The answer is cable if it`s in your area, the fibre optics are fast.
I use webwasher when i close for the day, that geta a lot of space back but most probably not enough to effect your PC performance.
There are so many variants it is difficult.
Rodz

[owensyd]

reinstall windows xp, they say now because of all the virus's and spyware, windows should have a fresh reinstall at least every 12 months