Laptop gone sooooo slow

[zamzummim]

Laptop which is fairly new has gone so slow, the laptop has plenty of space (only less thatn 20% filled).
I defraged, ran all the virus software etc.. but still really slow.

Any ideas?

[RichardCranium]

Power settings in control panel?

Too-clever-by-half proprietary processor-speed control software not configured correctly?

In what way slow? Is it slow in all activities, or just web based things?

Is the drive light on while it is being slow?

Does the System Monitor (or whatever it is called) give clues about which processes are clocking up the CPU time, or whether there is suspiciously high network traffic?

Have you drunk too much strong coffee this morning and it is actually just you going faster?

[minestrone]

Norton or McAfee?

[zamzummim]

Power settings in control panel?

Too-clever-by-half proprietary processor-speed control software not configured correctly?

In what way slow? Is it slow in all activities, or just web based things?

Is the drive light on while it is being slow?

Does the System Monitor (or whatever it is called) give clues about which processes are clocking up the CPU time, or whether there is suspiciously high network traffic?

Have you drunk too much strong coffee this morning and it is actually just you going faster?

Its slow in everything, from booting to opening any apps or doc, including web... yes the hard drive when slow is extra noisy seems so angry and the laptop is about to take off (like an engine revving lol) this is been going on only for the last week.

Anti virus is avast, that took a whole day to scan yesterday (full scan) found nothing, but also gave me a message that not all files could be scanned, but it always did this anyway.

[yorkshireman]

Did it slow down suddenly? Was it fine one day and then crawling along the next?

Did it start after you added some extra software? I don't know Avast, but it might be worth trying free.avg.com AVG Free - Antivirus and Anti-Spyware | Free Virus Protection instead in case.

It could be a hardware problem too. You don't think any of the BIOS settings might have got changed do you?

To rule out hardware I would be tempted to boot the system from a LINUX live CD e.g. Download - Linux Mint. If you use the Live CD/DVD you can see how quickly it runs then - without making any changes to your system.

I personally run LINUX on my laptop and run Windows 7 virtually under Virtualbox. This allows me to take regular snapshots of Windows and then whenever Windoze gets screwed up I can recover back to a known point with the click of a mouse.

[VectraMan]

Have you tried uninstalling all the anti-virus / security software? That generally makes things better.

My Dad's PC had a problem with something that switched off the paging file, and that made everything run like a dog.

[minestrone]

Windows essentials if far better and far faster than all the AVs I have used, and it is free.

AVG stinks, I knew I had problems on my PC and stuck on essentials and it picked up 2 trojans.

Take off windows search in the services, switch off indexing in the drive properties and install windows essentials. The PC will be much faster.

[xoggoth]

You must have lent it to my wife.

[Clippy]

You say the laptop is fairly new - have you un-installed all the un-necessary bloatware that manufacturers tend to install?

What brand is it? Some manufacturers are worse than others. e.g Sony.

[zamzummim]

Thanks all for the suggestions, not sure how to do most of it - I had AVG on the other laptop which is much older and much much faster than this newer one lol.

I slowed down after my son got home a couple of weeks ago and he use it lol, so I will check if he installed something news, mostlikely downloaded something.

How do I switch off the searching and indexing, from control panel/services?