Windows 7 questions

[Tiger Lily]

My mother has Windows 7 (with Norton 360) and it is really slow. She took it to a professional tech place to fix it and it is still slow.

She streams videos from Netflix. I have Vista and when I was streaming videos, I used to have to clear my cache every day or so if I wanted to keep my computer running at its normal speed, so I suspect that we need to clear her cache.

What is the best and safest way to clear her Windows 7 cache and not lose any good information?

Is there anything else that we should look at that might slow her computer down?

[Jlutz]

First thing I would look at is how much memory she has and processor speed. Just because windows 7 is for sale doesn't mean you should upgrade. If you don't have a relatively fast processor with At least 2 gig RAM for the 32 bit version and 4 gig for the 64 bit version it's going to be slow. Personally I run 8 gig of ram.

Keep in mind those are really the min recommendations.

Other things to look at would be defraging the hard drive, run msconfig in the run menu and disable any program you don't want to automatically load on start up.

I would definatly start with checking to see if she has the min system recommendations to handle running windows.

Actually it may be helpful to first have a discussion on what is exactly being slow on the computer? Is it everything, or only 1 specific thing

[seeker411]

I used to have the same problem - I use Advanced System Care 5. It's not very expensive (and there's a trial version that is free but not fully functional), and it's from Iobit software, which I have used in the past with excellent results.

It scans the system for everything from malware to services that are on but don't need ot be and gives the user the option to turn them off and clean things up. It's a good addition to Norton, as it provides another layer of protection.

Hope that helps!
Becky

[Tiger Lily]

Hi Jlutz - Sorry, I guess I should have specified that her computer is slow when browsing. She has 3 gig DDR3 system memory, 640 gig hard drive, 64 bit.

My Vista computer was slow at browsing during the days when I was streaming Netflix, but I know how to clear the cache in Vista and that would return my computer to its normal speed.

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with Windows 7 and we can't figure out how to clear Mom's cache.

[Jlutz]

take a look here

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows...ndows-7-cache/

[Tiger Lily]

Becky - thank you, I read that to my Mom and she asked me to send her the link to this thread

Jlutz - thank you, I told Mom about your link, too

Appreciate your help, guys!

[Tall Timbers]

It's possible that her internet connection has poor bandwidth... might not have anything to do with the computer. If she's got broadband, is her wireless password protected? If not, maybe a neighbor is moving truckloads of data along her internet highway connection.

[Tiger Lily]

Thanks TT - I'll pass your info on to my mother, too =)

[pixelpusher]

Hi Jlutz - Sorry, I guess I should have specified that her computer is slow when browsing. She has 3 gig DDR3 system memory, 640 gig hard drive, 64 bit.

I'm not a Windows guy, but I'd say right off the bat she needs more RAM than that. As much as her machine will take would be a good place to start...

Also, what kind of processor does she have? Looking on the shelves at BestBuy, I see lots of machines being sold relatively inexpensively with Windows7 that would likely barely meet the requirements to run it.

Lastly, try a good browser like Chrome. Internet Exploder is a pain in the neck.

[6stringedsignseeker]

I'm not a Windows guy, but I'd say right off the bat she needs more RAM than that. As much as her machine will take would be a good place to start...

Also, what kind of processor does she have? Looking on the shelves at BestBuy, I see lots of machines being sold relatively inexpensively with Windows7 that would likely barely meet the requirements to run it.

Lastly, try a good browser like Chrome. Internet Exploder is a pain in the neck.

Opera's a pretty good browser as well and has a nifty little thing called Opera Turbo that speeds up your internet if you're on a slow network. It can be misleading sometimes however... telling me I'm on a slow network when I know for a fact I'm not. Still it's easy to use. Some sites however won't run on Opera. I have to switch to Explorer when I want to check out Mcaffee Antivirus' site.

[Tiger Lily]

Thanks pixelpusher and 6SSS - I'll tell my Mom there are new posts on this thread

[jeffsd]

There are many things that can cause a machine to be slow. First you would have to determine where the bottleneck is; internet bandwidth, processor, memory, read and writes taking place to hard disk. Task manager will reveal whether it is the processor or the memory. If there are excessive read and writes to the hard disk preventing the system from doing anything else, then the problem is the system volume information (a protected part of the hard disk) has too much in it and is confusing windows - the fix for that is to disable system restore, reboot, then re-enable system restore. malware, viruses and norton will slow down any machine as well. processes that are running that are not needed to run all the time will consume memory, evidenced by task manager and taken care of by msconfig.

Data stored to the hard disk does not effect the speed of a machine, so deleting things will not help (only when you have more than about 65,000 items stored in one folder).

NTFS is a filesystem that is normally fragmented, and the data throughput of modern hard drives is so fast that defrag is a complete waste of time and will likely lead to permanent data loss. Defrag is one of those tools that I wished microsoft would do away with, because if you run it when there is a problem with the MFT, you will make that problem permanent and loose that data that was on that sector. Vista and Windows 7 (not XP) are suppose to automatically do a chkdsk when you defrag, however, it has been my experience that 90% of all drives have MFT errors and of those drives 90% of them require running chkdsk at least 3 times to correct them. Bottom line defrag was intended for FAT partitions on old drives (1990's) and is almost worthless for NTFS, and when weighing the risks in using it with NTFS it should never be used.

Speaking of tools to not use.... Although registry cleaners have a much lower probability of causing severe damage to your installation of windows, they should not be used. Sometimes these tools take out registry entries that it thinks are not used, but really are. An over sized registry will perform much better than one that has been turned to Swiss cheese and the effects of an over sized registry is trivial on today's computers. We are only talking of a little extra memory usage (let's say 40MB); and with machines with an average of 8GB of memory, you will not notice much difference if any. A clean registry was only a real concern in the 1990's when 40MB of memory usage exceeded the 32MB that came with the machine.

[Tiger Lily]

I'll tell my Mom to come look at your post, too -- wow, lots of detail, thanks, Jeff