Member Avatar for Titus33

Hi,

I have a 4 year old Sony Vaio laptop, that suddenly became very slow. I have noticed the following:
- The time taken to boot-up the PC is probably tripple what it used to be
- I can hear that the PC is very active even when there are no programs running. The CPU usage is constantly varying between 0-30%
- I have about 30% space available on my harddrive. I have also deleted several programs to try and speed up the PC to no avail
-When starting the pc the "start-up tune" is now also very fragmented

I have done the following:
- Ive defragmeneted the harddrive
- I have installed Norton's anti virus program
- I've purchased an external harddrive where I moved all my music and photos.

I would appreciate any help
Regards

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by TheBuzzer

Dani AI

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Alongside the startup/malware ideas raised by and the process-check suggestion from , focus first on low-level hardware and system-log checks. On a 4-year-old Vaio the most common causes of sudden, sustained activity and very slow boots are failing storage, memory errors, or CPU throttling from heat — and those are easy to confirm before doing any reinstall.

Try this concise diagnostic path:

  1. Inspect Windows event logs for disk, driver, or NTFS errors (run eventvwr.msc).

  2. Check drive health and scan for bad sectors from an elevated prompt:

    wmic diskdrive get model,status
chkdsk C: /f /r

    Run chkdsk /r only after backing up important files; it can take hours and a failing drive can get worse under heavy repair I/O.

  3. Run a full memory test (bootable Memtest86) for several passes to rule out bad RAM.

  4. Boot a clean live environment (Linux or Windows PE) from USB — if that runs snappy, the issue is OS/software; if still slow, hardware is the likely culprit.

  5. Check for overheating: feel vents, watch fan behavior, and read temps in BIOS or a hardware monitor. Thermal throttling will make the machine feel busy but slow.

If SMART or chkdsk show problems, prioritize a full backup and replace the drive (an SSD is the biggest single speed improvement on older laptops). If hardware checks look clean, use an advanced process tool (Process Explorer) and Resource Monitor to inspect I/O and driver activity, then run sfc /scannow to repair system files and consider BIOS/chipset updates from Sony only after confirming stability.

These steps separate software vs hardware causes quickly and reduce unnecessary rebuilding.

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Member Avatar for Sir Mark

Hi, i just noticed your post and its errily reminescent of what I went through this a.m. w/my laptop.Turned out to be MS Antivirus.Malware that runs on startup and disguises itself as a XP Antivirus '08 software.Tells you you have viruses and gets you to click for upgrades,Bottom line? Bad news...Brought my laptop to its knees within days.I do not know if you have this but it sounds like malware/adware or a combination thereof.Mcaf%e missed this and so did Defender.the fix for me was a google search for MS Antivirus and then an introduction to where I not only found removal instructions but an explanation as to what I was dealing with.. goodluck! Mark

Member Avatar for Beastmanh

Sounds to me like you have a process that starts up at boot time, that is eating all your memory up... The computer being very "active" is your system using virtual memory because your system RAM is taken up by this rogue process.. You should hit ctrl > alt > del and click on the processes tab.. Then click on the letters "CPU" TWICE. That will automatically put the process that is using the most cpu at the top of the list. When you find out what the process is called, please post it here. :)

Cheers,

~Mike

P.S. Do this when your computer is showing the symptoms you are talking about.

Member Avatar for mackone

You say you have disabled unnecessary apps, disable unnecessary Apps running in the background - Try disabling one at a time in msconfig/startup.

Norton did/does slow down my PC running XP Pro. However it seems to be back to normal - but only if I use the 'Classic. Appearance. Too soon to be certain... But the effect is startling... Anyone else see this?

Member Avatar for Beastmanh

Yes for sure Norton is a memory HOG... and in my opinion doesn't do its job very well either.... I use Avast... Its free... It works... And you can schedule boot time scans, which I like. The FIRST thing I would do is uninstall Norton and install Avast... but its up to you.

Cheers,

~Mike

Member Avatar for TheBuzzer

I would say format your laptop with a xp sp3 stripstreamed cd. Most likely the laptop got something bad that is wasting cpu cycles also 4 year old laptop might mean your system registry got a lot of leftover junk from uninstalled programs.

Formatting is the best way to gain speed back to your old laptop

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