Asus laptop - Works but is VERY SLOW

Question

I have a fairly new ASUS laptop computer. It's a cheap Walmart model, but it worked fine for a while. One day, for no apparent reason, it began working very slow. It does work but it takes about half an hour just to boot up. I re-installed Windows 7 (a very long process) but it didn't help. Applications seem to work, if you let it sit all day to do something. Any ideas on what might be causing this? Thanks.

Answer 1

Try booting to safe mode. If it is quick, you know the problem has to be with your startup applications on your normal boot.

Click start > Run. Type msconfig and hit Enter. In System Configuration, click on Boot tab. On the low half, under 'Boot options', check Safe boot. Click OK. Click Restart now on any dialog prompting you to restart your computer. If booting to safe mode is quick, you can be certain Normal Boot startup apps/services must be the problem.

Now you'll have to do the same as the previous paragraph but this time in the last step, uncheck Safe boot, and click OK and click "Restart now" on any dialog box prompting for a restart. You have no choice but to wait an hour if that's how long it takes. When it has booted up, you can try a minimal boot by disabling all Startup items and Non-Microsoft services, by: Start > Run> type msconfigand hit Enter. Click on Startup tab click on Open Task Manager > Right click on each of the listed apps and click Disable so that their Status is disabled. Now close Task Manager, go back to msconfig, this time click on the Services tabCheck the box 'Hide all Microsoft services'(important!). Then uncheck every one of the services listed in the box by clicking 'Disable all'. Click Apply, and restart your PC.

If all goes well you'll have to do the same by enabling the Services / Programs one by one, starting from the ones that are less likely to impact Startup times, to the more suspicious bloated programs.

If nothing changed even with Safe Mode, I suspect your harddrive might be dying. It usually starts off with slow read speeds, then later you hear click noises or scratching noises, at this point your harddrive is close to death. Important step now is to back up your data immediately. To check whether your hard drive is dying I recommend CrystalDiskInfo(http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html). Upon launching the program, you see your hard drive (C: usually). Things to check here are the overall 'Health status', and under the attributes below, are to check the attributes' 'Worst' column against the 'Threshold' column to see if any of 'Worst' values are lower than the 'Threshold' values. If so, your harddisk is on the verge of dying and remember to back up your data immediately! And of course you'll have to get a replacement hard drive for your laptop.