Computer Problem?

[pwdrive]

Breaking the house rules I left the PC on overnight to defrag, woke at 7 am and defrag was done, slight improvement but not a lot, the mouse is still intermittant, have tried another mouse, still the same.

Mouse observations:

I open up multiple windows on the screen, I try to shut them down by clicking on the "X" (red background) at the top right of the screen, sometimes there is a response, sometimes there isn't and I have to click the mouse button several times, same when clicking the back button, using the cursor/pointer finger pad and the left hand button below it that's below the keyboard (no mouse connected) presents no problem ie: an action will always result each time.

It's that coupled with the slowness of functions that makes it frustrating to use.

Ok..no good talking about backup discs and other systems to me, it means zilch, no comprende, I've been using home PC's since before Windows 95, never backed up anything never lost any files etc and never bothered with anti virus until the last couple of years or so.

If nothing happens then it's the crunchotron and a new PC.

Lawrence.

[Nick]

How much memory (RAM) on this machine?

[pwdrive]

How much memory (RAM) on this machine?

1Gb.

Lawrence.

[pwdrive]

Well...dumped the Norton anitvirus and installed the basic AVG free job...much faster, will see how it goes.

Lawrence.

[Mark Hennessy]

This feels more like a CPU usage issue rather than a file system problem. Have you tried using System Monitor to observe the CPU usage yet? (See my last paragraph in #5)

It occurs to me that everyone is assuming this netbook has a mechanical HDD, and that's probably correct, but does it have a solid-state drive? If so, defragging is basically unnecessary. In fact, Windows 7 should disable defrag for solid-state discs.

In general, defragging a mechanical HDD will speed up the boot-up speed of the machine and reduce the opening time of programs by reducing the number of "seeks" needed to open files. Opinions vary, but essentially, whether a disc needs defragging depends on how fragmented the drive actually is, not on the calender!

How quickly a disc becomes fragmented depends on how you use it; naturally, a system disc will become fragmented more quickly than a disc containing an archive of data files. Personally, I defragment my system drives every 2 or 3 months, and my "Archive" partitions might only get defragged every year or so. After doing so, there's no real change to the way the computer performs, which indicates that I don't need to do it more frequently. Every few days seems rather extreme, but perhaps if you have particularly slow drives and you use the computer extremely intensively then it might feel like it's worth doing. Additionally, discs with plenty of free space (like yours) tend to stay reasonably unfragmented for longer. When you run the disc defragmenter tool, it tells you how fragmented the disc is, and whether it needs to be done...

Who remembers the 1990s when Microsoft used to state that drefagging was unnecessary with the NTFS file system

But anyway, we've eliminated "sudden gross fragmentation" from the list of suspects. No harm in eliminating the easy ones first...

Here we have a lack of basic responsiveness to mouse clicks. Is this lack of responsiveness accompanied by frantic "thrashing" of the hard drive? I'm guessing you would have reported that if that was the case? For avoidance of doubt, have a look - if it's a mechanically quiet HDD, then have a look at the activity LED...

If the HDD is relatively inactive during these moments of unresponsiveness, then that moves the focus away from the file system (and/or a lack of RAM), and towards the software. Which is why I suggested monitoring the CPU usage.

As I said, it could be caused by a rogue Microsoft update - in which case doing a Google for the type and model number might return information about the problem from other users. I suggested that earlier - have you tried? I've fixed many obscure problems that way - if someone else has already found the cure, why re-invent the wheel?

Also, it could be caused by a hardware fault, I'm afraid to say. But before we get there, we need more information. So, tell us about the CPU activity, and the HDD activity.

Mark

[Mark Hennessy]

How much memory (RAM) on this machine?

1Gb.

Lawrence.

Hmm - a bit marginal with Windows 7...

Well...dumped the Norton anitvirus and installed the basic AVG free job...much faster, will see how it goes.

Lawrence.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend AVG these days. They used to be good, but that was a few years ago. Avast is the current recommendation for free AV.

However, I wouldn't use that either. I've found that Microsoft Security Essentials is perfectly adequate, and is a lot less resource-hungry than the 3rd-party products. In fact, some of my machines are totally unprotected, and I've never managed to pick up anything untoward (not that I recommend that to general users!). If you have broadband, you're almost certainly behind a decent NAT firewall, so it's not like the dial-up days...

Having "removed" Norton, use CCleaner to remove all the mess it usually leaves behind. It's a horrid product (IME, at least).

[pwdrive]

Not sure about HDD?

Got a bargraph up showing something, it says CPU usage 100%, memory 948 Mb, those figures vary a bit every second or so.

The above was taken with the internet on and ebay displayed.

Lawrence.

[Nick]

How much memory (RAM) on this machine?

1Gb.

Lawrence.

Hmm - a bit marginal with Windows 7...

Agreed - that's why I asked the question !! The single biggest gain you will probably get is upping the RAM to 2Gb (I think that's the maximum it'll take) - this is normally cheap but depends on whether your HP Netbook allows that - they are often severely constrained on available upgrades - that's why they're priced so reasonably. BTW, the disk is mechanical, so a defrag once in a while is a good plan NOTE: The defrag should be OFFLINE, i.e. done during a system re-boot - the C: drive is the important one...

The processor is also a 1.66GHz Atom with only a single core. Not a rocket!

Upgrading it to 2Gb, which is, I believe, the maximum it'll take, would be a cheap and excellent plan. Probably cost about 25 quid for that from Crucial http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/compatible-...110-1104vu - that's an example only - we'll need the exact model number of the Netbook to be sure - HP Mini xxx-yyyyyy etc.

Can't expect too much - it's really only designed for word processing etc. Remove all extraneous software, especially stuff that runs at startup. CCleaner it, add the extra memory, and it'll be lovely jubbly again

[pwdrive]

I understand all that but why is it slow, it never used to be, it used to work fine, something must be using all that memory etc, I might start deleting some programs, when I click uninstall it shows a load of programs and the date they were installed, there's those with a common (ish) date that seems to be when the PC was first bought, I'll leave them, but go through the others...publish and be damned, memory upgrade etc, might sound mad to you guys but I can't be ar*ed.

If nothing improves then it's not fit for purpose, that's always my bench mark, it will mean a new machine, time's money.

I'm grateful for everyone's efforts so far.

Lawrence.

[Nick]

If nothing improves then it's not fit for purpose, that's always my bench mark, it will mean a new machine, time's money.

Don't chuck it - send it to me and I'll sort it for you - seriously - its not a bad machine - its a couple of 100 quid to replace and it just needs some TLC - I did the same for my daughter's Netbook...

Definitely don't bin it...