icarus

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So I have a pretty vista ready laptop, so I thought at least. 3 gigs of ram 2 being nice ram, and a nvidia 8400m gs video, dual core 2.4gig processor, and it runs slow. Anybody know some steps or ways to speed up vista, or tweak it to work. Another thing is that vista constantly freezes, and I thought memory was what you needed to run multiple programs, and to not have a freezing slow computer, what the hell is going on...anyone??


Thanks for any response..

A

CWB

a little more information is needed ...

how much crap running in the background ?
what anti-virus/spy/mal/crapware is on the machine ?
you might have to update the bios as well as the drivers and so-forth .

yes , vista looooveeesss ram but that is only part of the answer . vista still has many issues .
yeah , it's pretty sad when a comp like yours is running like an old 66Mhz with 32 megs ram and '95 . but hey , that's what they call "progress" .

Devone16

sounds like you have a bunch of programs running in the background( Antivurus, media stuff, adobe etc...) . you need to stop them from starting when you start the computer. sometimes this will help.

ThumperZ1

If you brought a brand name laptop, they come with all kinds of crap that you don't need. Try the utility called PC-Decrapifier. It will let you know what you can get rid of.

Secondly turn off all the Aero crap. I know it's soooo pretty, but it's useless and a video hog.

Get into the msconfig from the run command and uncheck everything you don't need at startup.

Get into the users portion of the control panel. Shut the UAC off.

Black Viper has a really good tutorial on what services you should shut off in Vista, XP and 2000. www .blackviper .com

If you try to do too much at the same time, Vista will seem like it's locking up. It usually just takes some patience (1-3 minutes) and it will sort itself out.

There is a reliability/compatibility patch for Vista that is not in the windows updates. (at least it wasn't last week). Do a google search for
"Vista reliability patch".

davemo2us

First thing I did with a new HP laptop was format it and install a basic Home Premium 64bit version. That got ride of all the HP crap ware. Also, you can use the Key that came with the laptop to activate, just call MS and explain what you did and they will give you an activation code. Oh, one more thing if you got turion dual core, don't expect much they aren't as good, wish I would have went the 100 bucks more for the c2d.

icarus

I have windows 95 interface turned on, I never had Aero on even when my computer was crashing. I turned off a number of services for using tablet pcs, and such. I have only things that I absolutely need in my startup, and one antivirus program. UAC has been shut off too, about the patch the computer says it's all updated. I ran Pc Pitstop's Optimize, and also ran it through their websites battery of tests, and it checked out fine. It has stopped freezing, and its running decent..but I just expected better for the money and specs...

oh and CWB I have all the drivers as updated as hp will let me, they have a drivers update thing, and then windows update is all updated.

Also a couple people asked about what was running in the backround, I have avg free, but Its not running all the time I just use it too scan every once in a while. I have avast which runs all the time, and when I check process's there is a few little hp things running nothing big. As far as spyware, and adware its the same deal I use ad aware pro even though its vista ultimate 64bit isn't supported. It was freezing for a while on scans and when I contacted them they wouldn't try to help after I told them what system I was running haha.

I tried a bunch of different utilities to clean out the registry, and get rid of the junk files. Hp has it set up to where if you try to go update windows from the site, or install a driver from nvidia, it says download it through HP. I have to update windows through hp, and get drivers from them, and when I ran a driver program to see how hp kept up on getting me drivers as they came out, a very large number of them were outdated. None were like months and months, but they definitely aren't on the ball.

As for reformatting I called hp and said I wanted a cd since I bought the operating system, because I think its stupid that they include their little cd that slows down your computer ten fold with all the crap they include and they don't even give you a vista ultimate cd. They said I would have to buy the cd for whatever they charge, its ridiculous. If I had the cd I would probably reformat it with just vista ultimate, but I'm not gaming or anything so it works for now.

Lastly Hp has like HP Update, Quick Launch Buttons, QuickPlay, and Product detection... Do you think I should uninstall all of that?


Thanks for all the suggestions, one thing that I found that helped was on Download.com they have some tutorials for xp and vista to help speed them up which include turning off services and just some steps that helped me out.

Keep em coming if anybody finds out anything else that helped out.

elfoozo

I think you should immediately call the Microsoft Piracy hotline and tell them you think you received illegal software on your laptop because the OEM would not provide you with legitimate media. Be sure to not get into any of the details of why you want the media... focus on the fact that media wasn't provided and they acted shifty on the phone when you asked about it.

CWB

heh heh heh ... great suggestion there . it has always chapped my hide when it comes to "buying" the os installed on a machine and not being able to have the disk . it's kind of like paying for a hooker and then going the proxy route .

icarus , if you are going to do a full format you are going to need the drivers and so-forth for that laptop ... most likely they come on the "hp disk" . soooo ... you might want to play nice with them .
the simple fact remains : the comp was slower than molasses in january from day one ... that is an issue that hp is legally bound to resolve or you can go for a refund .

hp ... great printers , sucky comps .

icarus

I have the reformatting disc from hp, but then that just puts me back with all the shitty stuff that I started with. I did get a program that took off all of my drivers of my computer so would I be set to go if I resorted to that if it ever crashes again.

Like you said when I got it, yeah it was really slow...but it is doing a lot better, but once again for how for how much money and the specs it just seems like it should be a little bit better...Now if I was gaming then I would be pissed and want a refund or something. Next time I want to get a laptop that is MXM compatible... this intergrated Nvidia is shitttt.


Finally yes that is a good idea, but don't you think they would want a business name? Oh and a cd key, it doesn't seem like they would just give away a disc, and if they checked my cd key they would just probably say yeah its good, or call when your computer explodes.