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We’ve got three kids fighting over a laptop and two tablets. The laptop is taking more than ten minutes to boot up in the morning. It is getting on and the hard drive was full of rubbish which has now been removed (including the recycling what ever it is called on the current release of windows) but this hasn’t improved its speed. Its been purged of rubbish and defragged but again this hasn’t noticeably improved things
Someone has mentioned clearing the registry should help. Is this something that someone who has to ask these questions attempt and how would you go about doing this?
Thanks
Absolutely not.
The standard answer is upgrade to an SSD
Things to avoid include any product which advertises itself as speeding up Windows 10. They universally do more damage than good.
Check what is being run at start up.
i.e. press the Windows key, type "startup", click the option that says "Startup Apps" and see what is listed.
If there are apps there you don't need then completely uninstall them. You can deactivate any others you don't need to be running at startup.
.e. press the Windows key, type “startup”, click the option that says “Startup Apps” and see what is listed.
Apart from the virus software there isn’t much running that looks superfluous.
What tomnavman said.
Someone has mentioned clearing the registry should help.
Then they haven't got the faintest clue what they're talking about and you should not take IT advice from them ever again. Sorry if that sounds harsh but I've been doing this for over 30 years and this sort of random pseudo-authoritative bullshittery does no-one any favours and I'm very tired of having to counter it.
As for the rest, I mean, this is a question that gets asked like every four days. Skim back through the last couple of pages of the forum index, you'll find the answer and walkthroughs several times over.
Whilst absolutely correct, in light of
Is this something that someone who has to ask these questions
then
Check what is being run at start up.
isn't really great advice either I'm afraid.
If you want more personalised advice then you'll have to improve on "I have a slow laptop," throw us a bone here. What is it? Make, model, specification, age, Windows version. You can google how to ascertain these things. SSD and a clean Windows install is likely your best course of action but might be a waste of money if what you've got there is an Etch-a-Sketch.
Windows doesn't need 3rd party antivirus - windows defender is plenty good enough
Apart from the virus software there isn’t much running that looks superfluous.
... and that software is?
Windows doesn’t need 3rd party antivirus – windows defender is plenty good enough
True, and where I was going with my question, but wholly dependent on Windows version.
Maybe worth looking at what software is needed and whether a Chromebook is a suitable alternative. Good value, and admin-free.
This
The standard answer is upgrade to an SSD
Just did it to my wife's machine that despite decent specs was taking multiple minutes to boot up then runing generally v slow. Fitted a crucial 1Tb drive using cable and included sw to clone the drive and it's like a brand new laptop now.
Cheap to do if it doesn't need a big drive.
Apart from the virus software
McAfee or some crap it came bundled with? Get shot!
isn’t really great advice either I’m afraid.
Journey of a thousand steps. Do the simplest thing first. Other clichés.
It is at this point I am so relieved that our girls' school is an 'iPad for Learning' school and we pay a simple flat rate each month for the units (which we can buy for a very cheap cost after three years if we wish) and all maintenance, updates, IT support etc is provided by the school – they are even allowed one accidental breakage a year included in the cost.
Depending on whether you have a decent enough spec laptop to begin with then...
1. Create W10 Installation media
2. Fit SSD
3 Install W10
4 Install Office using your children's O365 licence (if the school uses O365 then they should also have applied the licence to allow you to download Office for free).
Do not run ANY registry cleaners/fixers.
👍
It is at this point I am so relieved that our girls’ school is an ‘iPad for Learning’ school and we pay a simple flat rate each month for the units (which we can buy for a very cheap cost after three years if we wish) and all maintenance, updates, IT support etc is provided by the school – they are even allowed one accidental breakage a year included in the cost.
not wanting to derail the thread - but is this a state school? what happens to those pupils who can't afford the "simple flat fee"?
Journey of a thousand steps. Do the simplest thing first. Other clichés.
Point is, it's not the simplest thing unless you understand what you're looking at. Randomly switching off stuff just because you don't recognise it isn't a wise course of action for muggles.
... and, honestly, even then that's the wrong fix other than as a temporary troubleshooting step. I'd only start cocking about with things 'running on startup' if either the machine was so hopelessly crippled that I couldn't otherwise interact with it to fix it in another manner, or it was woefully underspecced and needed every last ounce of resource it can get. It isn't the 1990s any more.
If an application running on startup is a problem then you need to be looking to change its settings or uninstall that app rather than buggering about with the system startup process, at the point at which I felt that this was the only option remaining I'd be thinking about flattening it and installing Linux.
The laptop is a six year old Intel i5 5200 based system with 8Gb ram (It's getting on but it's not doing anything hugely draining). The virus software is Norton.
Contrary to some of the comments nothing has been disabled or deleted but then again there isn't that much installed. Everything is up to date however a clean install sounds like a good idea because straight forward admin tools seem to be hanging up for no reason.
Our internet connection isn't stable enough for a Chromebook to be a realistic option.
Thanks for the help
My laptop's older and an i3 with 8Gb ram. It runs fine.
Clean install of W10 and an SSD will sort it out.
Clone the drive to SSD if you have stuff you need to keep.
Even a fresh out of the box laptop can be sped up significantly with an SSD and fresh windows install. The amount of bloatware bundled with most is mind boggling, especially anything purporting to be anti virus.
Just done my fifth laptop ranging from a 10 year old Vista unit to one less than 3 months old. All went from next to useless to no issues with speed or use.
As above and don't re-install Norton when W10 is in place. Defender will do the job well enough and you can do some filtering at the router to stop enquiring minds going where they didn't ought to.
Our internet connection isn’t stable enough for a Chromebook to be a realistic option.
... Then nothing is.
{because all the school work is done over the internet and a Chromebook will work without internet anyway!
Before writing something off may I suggest finding something out about it first}
As above, a Chromebook is not an internet portal. It's just another OS like windows or Linux (actually it is Linux but that's another story). They are far more capable than they were when first introduced.
Fully uninstalling Norton would be the best first step you could do there.
Just put a SSD into my son's laptop. The difference was amazing. Went from being almost unusable to good performance. Bought a Crucial SSD and used the supplied software to Clone it. I suspect that rebuilding it from scratch would get extra performance as well.
The only difficult bit was cracking open the laptop to change the drives. Hiding the last two screens under the rubber feet made it a lot easier
I know it's not the answer OP is looking for - he wants to sort out the slow start up.
But can agree on both the chromebook recommendations and the changing to SSD - have done both (new chromebook and new SDD in older machine) recently and it's been night and day difference.
Reading with interest,
The standard answer is upgrade to an SSD
What's an SSD?
A solid state drive, to replace the mechanical one which has spinning and moving things.
For bonus points, bearing in mind it's an old laptop, there's probably a fairly redundant dvd rom in it. When I installed an SSD a few years back, I pulled the dvd drive out and fitted the old HDD in the slot using a pretty cheap holder and cable. You end up with a rapid, small SSD for the o/s and a decent size HDD for storage.
Mine still has the dvd fascia on it for cosmetics, but there's just an HDD inside it. I can still use the dvd externally using a USB cable.
Following this thread and am interested in swapping to an SSD but wondering what is the best way to capture the system clone -the devices aren't networked and I don't have an external drive available. What do people normally use?
So do the system clone directly onto the new SSD? Sounds simple enough.