Laptop running Vista. Very often the response, for example when running Internet Explorer, gets really slow - can be 20 seconds or as much as 5 minutes or even longer - probably freezes at that point where running other application e.g. notepad is not possible, so I need to power down.

I am suspecting a virus but Microsfort Security Essentials is up to date and shows no viruses. I did try a full scan of hard disc on 2 occassions but guess what, after several thousand files scanned, that too seemed to ahve stopped running.

So suggestions on where to look for the cause.

Things to try:

Download and run ccleaner
Defrag Hard Drive
Try Chrome
Check you aren't running out of space on hard Drive
How much RAM have you got? consider upgrading
if none of those work try a Checkdisk and if that shows up errors you may have a failing hard drive

Could be a few things even something as simple as the fan packing in when the processor warms up, lack of disc space or a duff bit of memory.
But it also be the the hard disk is dying.

I have a laptop running Vista .... I am using it now!

I had very similar problems with Explorer and I junked it and now use Google Chrome. No problems now!

hd 111gb free from 250 gb
ram is maxed at 4gb (vista can only used 3+ gb anyway)
defrag - I understood vista did this in backgrouind so not needed doing

.... thing is the slow behaviour is not consistent ..... if lappy runs without freezing for maybe 15 mins, it seems to settle down as all is well. just watch the mosquito coast on bbc iplayer without any issues


I have recently been getting windows error:
Adobe Flash Player Update Service 11.6.r602 has stopped working .... it seems that once the error pops up, the laptop works as normal - not yet verified that that is the case..... but i guess i need to investigate that

There's no auto defrag in Vista and the Adobe thing is malware posing as a genuine download a lot of times sometimes due to a toolbar or something similar in your browser.

Mine will freeze from time to time, never been for that long though, I think it just locks up through too much cpu use in one go.

And that flash player thing, it needs updating (or rolling back to a previous version, but updating fixed mine)

an update not that anybody is interested .........

well gradually over a week the problem went away. what had changed? nothing as far as I am aware .... although just thinking about it, the neighbours have gone on holiday so maybe a clash over the wireless .... but I don't think so.???? (pretty sure I ran the laptop with network wifi turned off and without any I.E. browser)

got a notification from Adobe to updage flash player, whicv I subsequently did and the error message metnioned previously had not appeared since. *


ooof, it's hot today.

* arse, just 2 mons after posting, it has come up again ... oh well ......

[Edited on 13/7/13 by 02GF74]