For at least a few months now, my mom has been having troubles with her computer, aside from the couple threads about her computer I posted earlier: Facebook hangs This happens with me, too, occasionally, but it's more frequent on hers. Firefox freezes She tried Chrome and it was the same result -- worse, in fact, because if you leave Chrome inactive for a long time, it takes a while for the tabs to become active again, whereas on Firefox the tabs become active again immediately. Long delay sometimes in loading everything She started her computer in safe mode to check something last night, and earlier this morning she couldn't get it to not start in safe mode. I finally resolved it by changing this to Normal startup, but looking at the screenshot, which is from my computer, those appear to be the default selections. Any ideas? She switched to the basic theme a while ago from Aero and that seemed to help a little.
In terms of general computer slowness, there's a couple things you can do: 1. Run CCleaner 2. Keep track of your startup and task manager, make sure noting you don't need is running. 3. Defrag 4. Get rid of unused browser plugins. 5. Turn off Aero. 6. Do a general file cleanup (This doesn't really improve speed tbh, but I like to do it anyway).
If it's lagging, that could mean the PC can't handle all the services that are currently running. A way around this, at least I do this when I'm using After Effects because if I don't it's super slow, is to open the Control Panel > View by icons small or large > Click Performance Information and Tools > in the left sidebar click Performance Options > select Adjust for best performance > Apply This just gets rid of all the cool looking things Windows has to distract its users. When it's done it'll look more like a Win95 but it'll run like a champ. More processing power can go where it's needed. You could also cleanup startup applications so that startup time is down. Make sure that there aren't too many programs opened at once. A processor can only handle so much. If it only has to focus on one or two tasks, they'll get done a lot faster as opposed to five or six. -Nights
Going into performance mode will help with RAM but unless she'd be willing to buy new memory sticks then there's not much else that can be done. All of my aforementioned 'fixes' will help to decrease RAM usage. But if the model isn't that old I don't believe there should be a problem with the RAM. Most current systems (ie Win Vista/7/8) will have a pretty decent amount of RAM included. They typically come with 4 to 6GB starting out. The fewer programs you run through your computers ON duration, the less RAM that is consumed. My laptop stayed on for about two straight months with constant opening and closing of programs, web browsing, etc and I got a little notification saying my RAM was at its limit. I've got 6GB and two months of constant activity isn't bad. A low usage user should be able to go a very long time before they see a decrease in processing capability, that's with the computer remaining on the entire time. Users who, unlike me, turn off their computer when they are done will not likely run into this problem. -Nights
