OT ish Slow Windows

[stuart noble]

I assume Win8 has some sort of "Restore" function aka colonic irrigation

[Robin]

I wonder if it is (in part at least) a matter of perception.

IIRC you went from a pretty old desktop to the new laptop. So the new laptop was probably faster at booting up, opening programs, opening photos. You'd have noticed those changes.

Now you are used to it. So you no longer notice the changes. What you notice instead is that you are again having to wait while the bloody thing boots up, opens programs etc.

If so you could of course buy an even newer, more expensiove, better machine; or only use your laptop when drinking and look upon time it spends booting up etc as opportunities to bend the elbow of your choice :)

[The Natural Philosopher]

Pointing out that a motor car solves most of the problems of a horse and cart is zealotry?

[RJH]

Just been through the same thing with a mate's W7 IBM C2D laptop. Slowed to a crawl - minutes to open a browser.

Not helped by 2GB RAM, but we got it going fairly well by stripping out all the IBM laptop functions (media keys, fingerprint software, other stuff), and he'd attracted some adware that'd latched on to Chrome, so ditched that and put on Firefox and AdAware. AVG antivirus kept.

FWIW, an SSD disk can transform these older machines IME. But no harm (at all) in stripping out bad software.

[Davey]

Bad idea to start with.

The answer to this is to install the optional Firmware, which enables all sorts of useful things on your Humax. Start here:

See comment about PCWorld.

Your choice, but plenty of others are happy with theirs. Maybe they didn't buy then at a sale, though.

Thankfully!

[Davey]

Including cleaning them, it seems.

[David Lang]

It was noticeably faster at first.

I get the annoying spinning circle and the hour glass now.

I'll explore the drinking option :-)

[David Lang]

And I thank you for trying.

It may not be that difficult if you know your subject but to the layman its gibberish :-)

As an ex working magician I could describe a trick as using an Elmsley Count, an Ascanio Spread and a Tenkai Palm. Another magician would immediately know what I was on about.

[Richard]

The OP was asking for help on a Windows issue. The response of a zealot is to suggest the adoption of their particular religious preference. See the response from F. His was the correct response to solve the problem.

[Bod]

I use the script on this site:

I've used this script on Windows7 and 8. It gives a dramatic increase in speed. It's safe, I've been using it for about a year - ish.

Scroll down to the *Download Ready-Made Registry Script*. It makes a dramatic difference to the speed. It also gives you an included script to completely remove it should you want to reverse it.

*Read all of the reviews if you are at all wary of it*

Hope this helps you.

[Davey]

I can only refer you to the suggestion offered by The Natural Philosopher: "Insert DVD, follow instructions."

"Simples", as they say.

[David Lang]

Assuming you had the faintest idea what Linux was and overcame the fear of some dreadful calamity occurring .

[The Natural Philosopher]

In the case of the OP, the Dreadful Calamity has already occurred.

[Richard]

Damn. He *is* the OP. 11/10 for that.

[Bod]

Bod

Before you do that, I'd recommend that you go into msconfig and stop everything starting in the startup menu *except for your anti-virus). This also helps.

Bod

[Robin]

Why don't you spend your time and energy addressing whatever market failures have stopped Linux taking a larger share of the desktop market - especially the consumer desktop market - despite manifest advantages such as price? As it is this is yet another thread which seems to me to support the (in)famous comment:

"The biggest killer of putting penguin software on the desktop was the Linux community. If you think the Apple fanboys are completely barking, they are role models of sanity to the loudmouthed Open Sauce religious loonies who are out there."

And AIUI you couldn't just install any old Linux distro and use Netflix until last autumn. If so, how was that a system fit for the consumer market?

[Huge]

Whilst you (and he) have a point, it's all irrelevant.

(i) The desktop market is dying. I was in a meeting the other day where it was pointed out that the vast majority of access to our website is from mobile devices. And MS have just failed completely in their second attempt to break into the mobile market.

(ii) The war is over; Unix (and its relatives) won. Android is Unix. iOS is Unix. Blackberry is Unix (and dying itself, sadly). Windows Phone is nowhere.

(iii) In the server space, Unix won overwhelmingly.

(iv) Microsoft are a marketing company, not a technology company. Most people use Windows because they know no better.

[Robin]

I've no quarrel with (i)-(iii) with 2 small caveats:

a. I thought we were (still) in the context of Dave Lang in front of his laptop (and I'm not going to buy him a tablet!) b. most office workers I know/see still seem at present to use some mix of Windows/Office (but I don't know where that might go with eg Chrome)

[Mr Pounder Esquire]

Download and run free: Superantispyware. Malwarebytes.

[tony sayer]

I suspect that as most PC's are supplied by retail shops, and of course the industrial users can be supplied by anyone the suppliers won't get that much profit out of a freebie operating system nor will they make much from Open office or Libre office etc....

FWIW tried Linux and it was OK, and use WIN 7 and its also OK and does what I need of it, so no real reason/s to change.

However I do need to make up another PC from some spare bits around and if Linux can do what's needed then we'll see how that goes but that particular standalone PC will be in an office populated by people using WINders;!...