Need advise on cleaning up my PC.
By coffeebreak
@coffeebreak (17798)
United States
March 12, 2011 2:00pm CST
My PC is 5 years old...HP and I know there are tons of things it is capable of and I dont' do. Basically I email, PTC, Paid surveys, Squidoo/AC (places to sell writings) and a few other things like MyLOt..but generally I know there is more I could do and most do, and I don't. My HD is like 3GB and 78% is "Free". I sometimes get a notice that my "virtual memory is low"...not sure what that means. I get this nearly constant problem when booting up that something is running...in the tower there is this sound of a motor...constantly running and I dont' know what it is but it freezes everything. I turn it on and 20 minutes later it might be to where I can use it. Sometimes when active on the pC...all of a sudden this "motor" sound will start and everything freezes. I have done all the usual CCleaner daily, defrag monthly, clear cookies and temp files...all the usual stuff.
I have AVG anti virus and every day...whenever it is that I log on after 6pm...that thing will start rolling and the program will start and I have checked several times and no where do I have it checked to do an automatic upgrade or scan or anything... I know to do that manually...but yet it starts every day when I log on after 6pm. AndI can't stop it. Lord knows I have tried everything I know to stop it and it won't stop, I just have to let it "run" until it stops and that is often 1/2 hour so. This whole thing is just gotten me out of my mind.
So...if you have any thoughts about help for this problem...please let me know. I am a novice so the version "...for dummies" would be appreciated.
I have thought that maybe I have a bunch of junk on the hard drive or elsewhere and need a good cleaning like PC Doctor or something like that...get all the junk off the places where I dont' go...Registry, MSConfig and things like that that I don't have a clue as to what they do/are and don't touch it if I don't know what it is. I did take things off the Start Up Task Menu recently, but there wasn't hardly anythign there and what was there..I use.. but took of 2 things that knew I didn't and left what I didn't even know what it was.
I was thinking of calling Geek Squad for them to come out and look at it and see if they can clean things up.
So..any suggestions as to who to call, what to do or anything else that can help me with this? As little as I am online places.. don't UTube or Facebook or so many things that many do, I don't so I am starting with just thinking it is just junked up, hopefully no virus's or serious things, just to much clutter. But if a virus...Geek Squad or the like could find it and fix it. Any suggestions?
2 people like this
4 responses
@hardworkinggurl (37063)
• United States
13 Mar 11
I see a lot of suggestions and just wanted to say that it would be less costlier for you to do it yourself. I know it is so time consuming but think about the savings. Best route would be to do an entire recovery and if you do not have the disk maybe it will still be cheaper to purchase the license online, but do so before you run the full recovery. Explain to them you lost it and I know a friend who only paid $10 to get it.
Best of luck and don't feel bad I will be doing the same soon. *sad*
@coffeebreak (17798)
• United States
13 Mar 11
Yeah, I try everything suggested. I can do a "system restore" or "factory Restore" that puts it back to as it was when purchased. I've even done that before. But I loose so much and then have to put it all back on. I am afraid of what I will loose! I try to back up, but so far, have not had to use any back up to reinstall and always wonder...is what I have here on back up...do I just copy and paste it back or what? I guess that is another question for discussion....
@pyrofortress (192)
• United States
12 Mar 11
Virtual Memory is also called RAM, or Random Access Memory. You may want to upgrade yours to speed up your system! Crucial.com will literally scan your PC and tell you what you need to buy, and often times it's a really easy upgrade. If you don't know quite what you're doing you can always look on Youtube for some knowledge.
I'm glad to hear that you are using CCleaner, I use it all the time and it works great. I wonder though, are you also doing a registry scan/clean? CCleaner does that as well, and that usually helps as well.
AVG... I used to have it. Then it seemed to slow down a lot for me and I just decided to find something else. What I found was Avast. It's pretty nice efficient virus scanner and blocker. It doesn't bog down my entire machine even while it does it's scans. I highly recommend it.
@DoctorDidi (7018)
• India
19 Mar 11
Hi pyrofortress, would you please give an idea of Crucial.com? Also, what do you mean by CCleaner?
@kenzie45230 (3560)
• United States
13 Mar 11
Do you have Microsoft Security Essentials on your computer? I didn't. I had AVG as my antivirus and I had a firewall. And my computer seemed to be slowing down and I couldn't figure out why. Then I was informed that my emails were no longer being accepted and that I had a virus. Sure enough, I actually had 5 separate trojans on my computer. I checked in with PC Pitstop (another free scan I did) and someone on one of the forums suggested that I get Microsoft Security Essentials. That got rid of the trojans. But it also got rid of things that CCleaner didn't nor did AdAware or SpyBotSearch.
1 person likes this
@coffeebreak (17798)
• United States
14 Mar 11
Thanks. I'll check that out. Is MSSE one you buy at store or download?
@nunubanget (130)
• Indonesia
15 Mar 11
Hi coffeebreak..
After read all respond for your problem, I will say that all of that are good solving for your PC. But, till I write this post, I see you still have the problem.
Before we take the action, it's better to recognize the main problem of u'r PC. Is it hardware or software problem? According to your information that your PC is 5 year old, I assume that your PC has a core duo/dual core/athlon 64x2. For the normal activities, I think it's good enough, unless you have the 'heavy' application such as image/video processing, oracle, etc. I'm wondering the hardware specification of your PC and what kind application you've been installed.
I hope your PC get well soon..
@coffeebreak (17798)
• United States
16 Mar 11
Athlon 64 is what I have..whatever that is!!! I dont' do much and don't download hardly anything. I don't play games, of do video anything. It has only what it came with. Only "programs" I have is a photo editing one and one game for my grand daughter that came from a disk, not a dowload via internet. I use Mozilla over IE because the constant updates with IE were making me crazy cause an update often made the PC go goofy, and the only way to fix was to go back before the update. So I stick with Mozilla. I have Service Pack 2 and have not updated that either. DId once and it caused so many problems with the PC and freezing nad crashing and all,,,I went back to as it came from factory and haven't had problems with that since...unless that is my problem now....out of date SP2.
