Slow Laptop help

[Knut]

I recently reformatted my laptop and re-installed windows. After this my laptop is running at 70% or higher CPU usage and is slow as hell.

What can I do to boost the performance ? Currently only 50GB of 140 is free. How can I ensure that the old copy was deleted completely ?

Would it help to post the list of processes?

Thanks !

Specs:

HP Pavillion dv2500 Notebook PC
AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-58 1.90 GHZ
RAM: 1983 MB

Running Windows Vista

[Hack&Lube]

Harddrive space has nothing to do with CPU usage. It is irrelevant. If it wasn't running at 70% constant usage before, then something is wrong.

Are you sure, that since you are on a new install that your computer isn't just struggling because it's doing all the Windows Updates? Don't list all your processes, just the ones chewing up the most CPU and RAM usage.

Also, the best solution is to get rid of Windows Vista. I wiped Vista off my mom's netbook for her and installed Windows 7 and I swear the thing is so much faster. Also, get an SSD

If you reformatted your laptop, the old copy should not even exist anymore. The old copy would only exist if you installed the new copy of Windows while within Windows. Then the installer would make C:\Windows.old which would be your old install. What did you do when you reformatted your laptop exactly? Did you go through the recovery partition? Or did you use a Windows CD and install over the existing partitions or deleted them?

[Vulcan]

After any installation or update I do a defrag. I like Smart Defrag myself.

http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html

[Knut]

It was running at 70% + before that why wanted to do a reformat (with the HP windows recovery disk). I am wondering if it is a hardware issue.

As I posted this I discovered a tonne of new Windows updates (like SP2). So I hope once those are installed it speeds up.

I hate Vista, but I no longer have any of the old windows versions hanging around. As for the hard drive, most files are stored on an external hard drive and USB drives. I will look into am SSD though.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Vulcan

After any installation or update I do a defrag. I like Smart Defrag myself.

http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html

Although a fresh install when previous partitions have been wiped into unallocated space should have no defragmentation at all.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Hesla

It was running at 70% + before that why wanted to do a reformat (with the HP windows recovery disk). I am wondering if it is a hardware issue.

As I posted this I discovered a tonne of new Windows updates (like SP2). So I hope once those are installed it speeds up.

I hate Vista, but I no longer have any of the old windows versions hanging around. As for the hard drive, most files are stored on an external hard drive and USB drives. I will look into am SSD though.

Okay, the problem here is that Vista is very inefficient and the Turion is not a very fast processor and the system overall lags because it probably has an old 5400 RPM laptop drive. I would cut back all background apps as much as possible and turn off all screen effects except basic ones.

Like I said, I was looking at my parent's netbook and it was suffering with horrible CPU usage. It has a CPU that is probably half the speed of yours (Atom 1.3GHz) but I removed Vista and put on 7 on an SSD and it flies now.

What apps or processes are using the CPU most of the time? If it was on 70% usage all the time, something must be using the CPU. What process(es) are they that are on top when you sort by CPU usage?

[Knut]

System --> bounces from 10,000,000 to 50,000,000 + B/min
Svchost.exe (netsvcs) ---> bounces from 9,000,000 B/min to 100,000,000+ B/min

These two will jump up and down without me even doing anything.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Although a fresh install when previous partitions have been wiped into unallocated space should have no defragmentation at all.

Maybe, but I found it helped but I agree there seems to be too many processes running in his background, which is strange in a fresh install. Maybe he needs to get rid of some Startup programs.

[Knut]

update:

Did alll possible windows upgrades, ran Ad-Aware (nothing) and did a disk defragmenter. I also prevented all but the anti-virus from opening up on start up. It is a little quicker, but still idling at 40 to 50% and occasionally gets up to 100% when a few windows are open.

It is at least useable now.

[Hack&Lube]

When system and svchost are consuming your cpu cycles, it's often hard to pinpoint what exactly is happening behind the scenes. Your computer maybe indexing your drive or caching it or something else is going on. I would chalk it up to the inefficiency of Vista. There really was a close class of laptops around that time that should never have had Vista installed on them because they didn't have the power to deal with how slow Vista is/was.

If the CPU is always 40-100% then the CPU is just too slow for the operating system. You could try looking up how to overclock the Turion CPU. You could also try installing Windows XP and see if it makes a difference.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

If the CPU is always 40-100% then the CPU is just too slow for the operating system. You could try looking up how to overclock the Turion CPU. You could also try installing Windows XP and see if it makes a difference.

Nah..not true at all. At idle, Windows Vista/7/2008 would should <50% CPU utilization even on a 233 mhz pentium..You can use VMWare to inspect how much CPU an idle Windows box uses, and its literally less than 100 Mhz.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Nah..not true at all. At idle, Windows Vista/7/2008 would should <50% CPU utilization even on a 233 mhz pentium..You can use VMWare to inspect how much CPU an idle Windows box uses, and its literally less than 100 Mhz.

I'm guessing there is some bloatware or something else in his OS that is using up his CPU cycles. I saw this same behavior on a few OEM equipped with Vista notebooks and I could only cure it by wiping and installing 7 or XP.