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Laptop problems


Guest Gladstone

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Guest Gladstone

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My laptop has been getting increasingly slower the past few days. Unbearably slow tonight.

I'm a bit worried that it might have a virus of some sort.

Only thing I'm hoping it might be is that I've been saving everything in the c drive including my iTunes. The c drive is now about 80% full. This past week or so I've added a lot of music - could this make it go really really slow? Bear in mind it's a fairly new laptop ( just over a year old).

I'm in the process of trying to shift the iTunes stuff to me data folder but it's taking fucking ages. I'm hoping this will free up enough space in the c drive to let it run at a normal speed again.

But really, I know fuck all about computers, so just looking for any advice on sorting this out!?

I need this laptop to be working for DJing on Friday night!

Cheers

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If you've filled your C drive it could slow it down, especially as new versions of windows will probably be trying to index everything for search purposes. The operating system will also use a certain amount of the hard drive as virtual memory so if you fill it up you might see a slow down because of that.

Shift your music somewhere else and run a virus scan just to be safe. Then if you've still got issues you can dig a bit deeper

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Guest Gladstone

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Cheers Chris - it's Vista.

So fair chance it's slowing it down. That's what I'm hoping. This does seem to have coincided with me trying to get anything in my CD collection onto my iPod.

Looks like the transfer is going to take all night, so I'll need to check in the morning.

My laptop won't go into standby mode if I don't touch it will it? Ie, if I leave it running, the music will get transferred overnight??

Cheers

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You might have to set it to not go into standby, Vista likes to do that when your not looking.

Seeing as you have a day and a half and if its as bad as you say, I'd dump all my critical files and music on an external and re build windows. Bit of a ball ache, but it's an almost sure fire fix for most things.

If you're just going down the virus scan route, I'd download and run spybot if I was you.

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Guest Gladstone

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You might have to set it to not go into standby' date=' Vista likes to do that when your not looking.

Seeing as you have a day and a half and if its as bad as you say, I'd dump all my critical files and music on an external and re build windows. Bit of a ball ache, but it's an almost sure fire fix for most things.

If you're just going down the virus scan route, I'd download and run spybot if I was you.[/quote']

I don't realty have a day and a half - ive 2 days of work ahead of me!

I also don't have an external drive handy! Something I'm going to get for storing my music I'm the future though - definitely!

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I'm sure you're already aware of this but its worth reiterating.

Laptops live are a disaster waiting to happen. They should never be in a mission critical position.

People can try and brag all they want about how they've done X for Y amount of time and never had a problem (yet) but at the end of the day, if that computer hangs, crashes or fails to boot, responsibility for the show stopping is yours.

Of course, maybe (hopefully!) the laptop isn't mission critical in your situation and you have a stack of CDs and an appropriate player, perhaps the laptop is just for convenience. But personally, if I were using a laptop for a live perormance, I wouldn't be using it for home use as well, I'd preferably set it aside as a dedicated machine for live work because, one dodgy download is all it takes for the thing to go out of action for a few days.

Filling up the hard drive to 80% with crap then expecting it to work flawlessly live...well...

I'm a pedantic, so I dont want to perpetuate the popular belief that how full your hard drive is is directly proportional to a computers performance. Its a bit more complicated than that.

Generally, a computers page is set to about 150% of how much RAM you have, so its definately a good idea to keep that amount free on your hard disc.

When you install a program, just because you uninstall it doesn't mean it'll remove itself properly or completely from the system.

A lot of programs run in the background that dont need to, simply because the manufacturer wants them to. Not a bad idea to disable these in msconifg or out of the registry altogether (depending on how confident you are you know what you're doing!!!)

Windows keeps restore files and as time goes on, the repository of these definately doesn't get any smaller!

So, as time goes on, your hard disc does become more full, and your computers performance does drop. The remedy? A good orgnised file system, a good backup routine, a proper OS install disc and copies of all the drivers/programs you need to wipe that sucker and start from scratch.

A defrag is usually about as much use for increasing performance as a chocolate teapot is for fending off rabid sheep, but if your drives that full, it might be in a pretty bad way. I would try defragging the drive in this instance, but dont even hope that it'll solve anything!

Good luck for friday!

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I'm running 7 right now, I've actually bought windows 7!

I had a licence for vista with this computer, and I *bought* another licence for windows 7 (after running the beta, I was very impressed) to replace it, Vista was that bad.

Depending on the age and spec of the laptop, a downgrade to XP may or may not be a better option if it is available.

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I'd sooner buy more RAM, it's cheaper:up:

[geek]

Ahh, but 32 bit Windows will only address 3.12GB of RAM (that figure is for Vista specifically). If you buy Windows 7 you get 32 and 64 bit so you can choose. After 3 1GB sticks of RAM you are wasting money.

My workstation at work has 2 dual 3.6GHz Xeons and 8GB of RAM. Runs like a fucking champ so it does.

[/geek]

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[geek]

Ahh, but 32 bit Windows will only address 3.12GB of RAM (that figure is for Vista specifically). If you buy Windows 7 you get 32 and 64 bit so you can choose. After 3 1GB sticks of RAM you are wasting money.

My workstation at work has 2 dual 3.6GHz Xeons and 8GB of RAM. Runs like a fucking champ so it does.

[/geek]

I've got 64bit Vista, I just skinflinted on my build 'cos I wanted it NOW. :up:

And I've heard the 64bit version is much better so that's maybe why I'm not experiencing the shit with it?

*PS you can get 64bit XP as well, but it's apparently fucking rubbish. Go figure o_O

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Guest Gladstone

Cheers dudes.

When I got up this morning, the laptop was still doing the transfer. Things seemed to be running a bit quicker, and I managed to check what space there is on the c drive - and there still seems to be an awful lot of stuff on there. I'm going to try and shift everything into the e (data) drive tonight after work, and leave the program files etc in c - is that the best way to go about it?

I'm going to try and get my hands on an external hard drive today as well - any recommendations?

:up:

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Guest Gladstone
Western Digital My Book is good. You'll get a 1TB one for around 80-100.

Cheers.

Will that be readily available on the high street at that sort of price? I'm looking to physically get my hands on one today if possible!

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Cheers.

Will that be readily available on the high street at that sort of price? I'm looking to physically get my hands on one today if possible!

PC World *spit* should have it for 87 if you do the collect@store thing. It might be 30 dearer if you just go in to take it off the shelf, so it always pays to reserve it. I have no idea why...

WD My Book Elite External Hard Drive - 1TB at cheap prices | Pcworld

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I'm going to try and shift everything into the e (data) drive tonight after work, and leave the program files etc in c - is that the best way to go about it?

If you have a large hard drive and it's split into a c:\ partition and a data partition then yes, absolutely that is the best way to organise things. Keep the C:\ drive free as much as possible and just use it for the operating system and program installation files then have all your documents and media on the data drive.

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Guest Gladstone
If you have a large hard drive and it's split into a c:\ partition and a data partition then yes, absolutely that is the best way to organise things. Keep the C:\ drive free as much as possible and just use it for the operating system and program installation files then have all your documents and media on the data drive.

Someone once told me that before, and I just ignored them... Wish I hadn't!

Does anyone know why (taking my laptop as an example), my hard drive was split into a c partition and a data partition before I bought it, but everything is still set up to automatically save directly into the c drive (i.e. my documents, my music, my pictures, everything)?

Why, if they go to the bother of splitting the hard drive etc, don't the bloody things just come set up in such a way that all "my documents" type things go directly to the data drive by default?

The reason I didn't bother re-routing to the data drive when I got this laptop was that when I did that before on an older pc, it just turned into a bit of a pain in the arse, because I ended up having to look in two places for things, due to the default route for saving anything remained the c drive, and my wife didn't get the whole concept of trying to save everything to the data drive at all.

I'll have a serious re-jig of my laptop though, and get everything routed to the data drive from now on, as well as getting my hands on one of those external hard drives for the sole purpose of storing my music.

Cheers guys :up:

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Someone once told me that before, and I just ignored them... Wish I hadn't!

Does anyone know why (taking my laptop as an example), my hard drive was split into a c partition and a data partition before I bought it, but everything is still set up to automatically save directly into the c drive (i.e. my documents, my music, my pictures, everything)?

Why, if they go to the bother of splitting the hard drive etc, don't the bloody things just come set up in such a way that all "my documents" type things go directly to the data drive by default?

The reason I didn't bother re-routing to the data drive when I got this laptop was that when I did that before on an older pc, it just turned into a bit of a pain in the arse, because I ended up having to look in two places for things, due to the default route for saving anything remained the c drive, and my wife didn't get the whole concept of trying to save everything to the data drive at all.

I'll have a serious re-jig of my laptop though, and get everything routed to the data drive from now on, as well as getting my hands on one of those external hard drives for the sole purpose of storing my music.

Cheers guys :up:

Windows 7 uses libraries and you can put them into multiple folders, or a single folder on a second drive. I have all of my music on a second hard drive, and it default saves it into there. Windows 7 rocks, and it makes data storage easier, especially if you want to shift it from your system files.

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Guest Gladstone
Windows 7 uses libraries and you can put them into multiple folders, or a single folder on a second drive. I have all of my music on a second hard drive, and it default saves it into there. Windows 7 rocks, and it makes data storage easier, especially if you want to shift it from your system files.

Did you know that all that shit was my idea?

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Guest Gladstone

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Jesus fuck, I think my laptop may be fucked. Came home, transfer done but everything still going mentally slow. I'm in the process of restarting to see if that can help in any way but even that's taking a fucking age.

FUCKING FUCK

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