PC slow & unresponsive
I've noticed today and yesterday that my PC seems to be having issues accessing various sites and the internet in general. Some sites takes ages to open and some don't open at all, i've got Zonealarm installed and i can't even open it to a scan, did a malware scan that picked up 1 file but no change.
Seems to point to either a software or firewall issue - any ideas what i can do? Should i uninstall/reinstall Zonealarm first?
I checked my internet speed which is fine.
Seems to point to either a software or firewall issue - any ideas what i can do? Should i uninstall/reinstall Zonealarm first?
I checked my internet speed which is fine.
The trouble with tribbles is.......
Comments
I said I'd never do this but my computer guru recommends me installing Unix which he's sent me on a USB stick that he says will boot up reliably and afterwards the machine will run as usual except faster and still let me use my regular programs as if I was running Windows.
I bought my latest laptop an HP14 only a month or two past and WIN10S has been nothing but a nuisance, its slow and as you said, unresponsive, locks up at least once day usually when running Amazon Prime.
I suspect my Adblockers might be the cause of this since these lockups dont occur using YouTube and possibly Amazons built in ads might be stroppy if stymied by Adblocker.
The reason I tried sticking with 10s is because I hoped it would save me from having to install a plethora of anti malware and various plug ins to protect me while browsing via Firefox.
I wish someone made a stripped browser that wasn't loaded with bloatware like Firefox now is. Oh well lets see what this Unix fix is like but I fear it will end up being a nuisance with problems of its own but my guru swears it will be for the best
https://mb.boardhost.com/BikerMike/index.html?1593001131
I have been using Lubuntu on an old laptop for some time now and it has given it a new lease of life,better still is my raspberry pi3 which goes like you know what off a shiny shovel on the net!
The worst part of HP and their OSs is that even some of their "drivers package" contains HP branded stuff that may be a nuissance. Anything that "reports status", "keeps your PC upgraded" and so on, are a big red flag to me.
Are you sure that you have a Windows 10S installation/license? I've read that Microsoft stopped sell Windows 10S a few years ago. OEMs can sell computers with Windows 10 Home switched to S, and those "fake Windows 10S" can be converted to standard Windows 10 Home (but it's a one way path... you can not re-enable S mode again).
Don't underestimate the power of antivirus. I've "enjoyed" the quirks of Kaspersky, Avast and BitDefender when trying to buy things online (that's the reason why I switched from Kaspersky to BitDefender, and why I have BitDefender extensions disabled).
I only use NoScript, HTTPS Everywhere and uBlock Origin... and I don't know if HTTPS Everywhere is still needed (because some browsers can be forced to only use HTTPS).
But Windows 10S forces you to use Edge (or anything from Windows Store) that has no (good) adblocker included, so you still need some addons. uBlock Origin is available for Chrome, so I guess you could use it on Chromium (if you're not willing to use an official Google product) and Edge (latest Chromium-based version)..
An' you know what they said?
Well, some of it was true!
That's the first thing I do as well mate. Find CPU and HDD at 100%, then check which processes are taking up a lot CPU/HDD usage. The last few I found on new Windows 10 laptops running slow was caused by an expired trial version of McAfee anti-virus software, bundle with the machine from new. Missing updates and a dodgy browser toolbar was the cause once too.
I have loads :)) :))
Hope they didn't find my spankbank :)) :)) :))
Well, my first thought was "overheat" but I didn't say nothing because zx1 said that the problem was solved (and I read that some sites had service shortages last week).
An' you know what they said?
Well, some of it was true!
I had a work PC a few years ago that was almost unusable for half-an-hour upon booting. Disabled Dropbox initialising on boot and, boom, instantly fixed.
Although i have noticed that it's recently been taking longer to boot up.
If that computer doesn't have a solid state drive consider installing one. You'd see a big difference in speed. Way better than messing around with settings and cleaners.
There are tools such as process explorer (think its that) and stuff like autoruns (to see what is really being loaded, use with extreme care) if using an older version of Windows too.
Yes last W10 box I disabled Cloud/OneDrive from running at startup. I did not need it and figured if I did it was only a couple of clicks away at most :D
What does stop me from using W10 is the size of some of the updates, they are near complete builds it seems. For someone who has to pay per GB in effect for internet data, I can't really be doing with a 3+ GB download more than once every few months if that. I did much prefer the previous way of incremental updates as previous versions ie: updates could be anything from a couple of kb to perhaps say 500-600mb or so. That was more friendly. The only other thing of major concern is (as per W8 as well when they started this) is the silly friendly startup where its quite annoying to get to safe mode or options like the shell without starting Windows fully to 'request' it or using the boot dvd. IE: no "F8" options! When I first tried W10 a few years back as an experiment it was really annoying when it tried to fix itself and got stuck in a repeating boot loop, unable to load Windows for me (even in safe mode or offer me a command line) and could not fix itself, a case of it trying to be too friendly and too clever. There's probably a third party tool floating about to allow restoration of "F8 during startup" options though I guess. Not ranting. Note I've not mentioned anything about this privacy nonsense either.
I couldn't uninstall it, had to get my brother over as he knew more about it. It seems it doesn't like you to uninstall it.
Use Zonealarm now.
Preventative Measures:
I think what is needed to maintain efficiency is not just tools like zone alarm which help but are not water tight, is regular backups of the hard drive using tools such as CloneZilla. That way, if you think you picked up an infection you can revert to a last known backup. Its also for this reason I recommend keeping operating system partition, separate from the one I used to store your own files. In fact, for me they are separate disks.
Ram Issues:
Recently, the 'family computer' (a 2009 iMac) experienced a very noticable slow down. It turned out that an OS software update meant that the OS was not content with 2GB or ram anymore. So I upgraded the ram to 4gb it was a night and day difference. The machine now has 8gb and its perfectly usable despite being on the old side.
Dust and Dirt
Ensure the insides of the computer are clean. A build up of dust will slowdown fans, reduce air flow and devices will therefore run hot and start throttling to cool down. Give it a good clean.
Hard Drive Issues
Often the unexpected slowdown can be an indication that your harddrive is going janky because each read/write takes multiple attempts. Run a check disk or equivalent on the hard drive to check its integrity, but be aware that in the 21st century hard drives are so vast that this is not a very quick operation and can take over 24 hours for very large drives ( >=4 tb).
Windows Updates
Sometimes windows 10 tries to download and update all or part of itself in the background whilst your using it,when that occurs you will notice a performance hit. On lower powered devices this will be very notable.
Maybe they were using your PC as the server for Pr0nHub then whilst they, ahem, serviced the main ones?