slow computer

Sometimes programs on my computer take up to a minute to open up.

And then when they close, the screen goes down the window like one of those erasers from an Etch-a-Sketch.

This problem mostly happens with FireFox, but sometimes with Windows Explorer, AIM, AVG, and others. The right click window will sometimes take five to ten seconds to pop up, and the volume control icons will not always respond right when i press the Fn key on my keyboard, normally leading me to unmute my volume, then upon seeing nothing, unmute it again which leads it to go back to mute. FireFox will also say "FireFox is open, but not responding. To open a new window, stop the existing process or restart your system."

I do not have any viruses. I defragmented my system sometime in the last month. My Local Disk is only 21% full. I have Windows XP on a Toshiba Satellite with Intel M Celeron CPU 410 @ 1.46 GHz and 448 MB of RAM.

How can I speed up my computer?

More processing speed and more ram will help.

Get a non-celeron processor.

With a laptop the most you can do is software based.

Download Spybot Search and destroy to check for spyware, just in case.
Then run CCleaner to clean up old files and check running programs for stuff you don't need or don't use a lot and switch them off. Then clean up your registry. What you can also do is switch off hardware you don't use like bluetooth, infrared ports etc. It helps a bit both on the power saving and the computer speed though the change will probably be small.

Originally Posted by Mafoofoo

More processing speed and more ram will help.

I knew that someone would say that. I checked the specs for the first time ever when I made this thread.

Originally Posted by Silver

Get a non-celeron processor.

What would you suggest?

Originally Posted by wolfen

What would you suggest?

I would suggest an Intel Core 2 Duo. You could also get a Quad, but those are more expensive.

You can't just upgrade the processor on your laptop, you'd have to get a new one.

Has it always been this slow? Take off all unneccessary programs from startup. If that all fails you could try to reformat your computer and reinstall windows.

Originally Posted by MLNick

You can't just upgrade the processor on your laptop, you'd have to get a new one.

He didn't necessarily say he was using a laptop.

CCleaner is probably a good thing to do. It clears up the various Internet files that browsers usually do, and more, such as temporary program files, which the browsers don't do-- and those can build up after a while.
You can also set it to securely delete these items (as in, overwrite them upwards of three times). Be careful, though, you can delete programs and registry items with it.

Originally Posted by Silver

He didn't necessarily say he was using a laptop.

In his first post he said he is using a Toshiba Satellite (which is a laptop series)

Forget about changing processor since it's a laptop - but you could probably stick some RAM into it, if you're lucky.