Well my computer is a couple of years old and takes forever to startup. It will get to the welcome screen in good time, but once I login first it sits there for about 2 minutes just showing by desktop backround with no taskbar, icons or anything. I cannot do anything for at least the next 7 minutes. I can click on folders and shortcuts but they don't open, About 5 minutes after logging in, Suddenly a heap of programs come up, installs that have expired trial software, Steam, Skype, Bittorrent and some other files, as well as anything I clicked on in the first 7 minutes before it started responding. When I have closed these I look at my notification area, and there are about 5-10 installs, programs and updates that are waiting for me to use them. I click on them, but they will not open up for about 5 minutes, and when they do their taskbar lists won't respond, and pop up wherever my mouse is pointed. If I get them all closed, I try to start a simple program like Firefox or open a video with GOM Player it will be really laggy and highly unresposive while it spends way too long to open anything. Once the program is open, however, there are no problems. The problem almost certianly rests with my HDD's beign overloaded, but they are not all that full:
C: 465 GB Space, 60GB Free
E: 931 GB Space, 410GB Free
F (Portable): 931 GB Space, 31 GB Free
Any software to speed up my computer would be appreciated.
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Jump to PostYou probably have a lot of background apps starting in combo action with a fragmented hard disk. You can use msconfig to take a look and modify your startup. Definately ck to see if the drive ca. Be defragged.
Jump to Posthello,
It could be your system overloaded with programs at start up, virus/spyware, or the hard drive going bad. What brand is it? If it is a Dell or HP, they come with diagnostic tools before you load windows that you can run. Have you tried booting up in Safe …
Jump to PostOne way of getting rid of old temporary files etc that can be clogging up your machine is to download the free program CCleaner and run it several times (in other words, let it run a registry check, tell it to clean up the files, then run it again, clean …
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You probably have a lot of background apps starting in combo action with a fragmented hard disk. You can use msconfig to take a look and modify your startup. Definately ck to see if the drive ca. Be defragged.
Typed in msconfig in run. Dosen't seem todo anything, about 2 minutes later while I'm playing a game up it comes, and I remove lots of the startup programs. Do a restart, absolutely no change.
However, I have got a key lead on this. I have noticed that each time I start up, the slow and lag ends with a message telling me that common software manager has crashed. Every time I startup this happens about 10 minutes after I have started my computer.
So, any help with that?
hello,
It could be your system overloaded with programs at start up, virus/spyware, or the hard drive going bad. What brand is it? If it is a Dell or HP, they come with diagnostic tools before you load windows that you can run. Have you tried booting up in Safe mode? With Safe Mode, only the basic programs load. This way, it helps you figure out if a program(s) is/are slowing your pc. Hope this helps.
One way of getting rid of old temporary files etc that can be clogging up your machine is to download the free program CCleaner and run it several times (in other words, let it run a registry check, tell it to clean up the files, then run it again, clean up, run it again, etc. until it stops finding anything. Then defrag your disks if you haven't already done this. This helped with my old xp machine, but ultimately it remained far from ideal until I upgraded it to W7. Your machine sounds as if it is so far gone that a reinstall of the OS might be the only solution.
You might try uninstalling Dragon? for a check, then reinstalling it. If not Dragon, then do a search for Common Software Manager in Program Files and uninstall the parent application.
If disk space is a concern try using Mydefrag to sort the bits out. It uses the Windows defragmentation APIs, but is faster, and does a better job.
1st as suggested do a system clean up, You can use all these tools you can Open 'my computer' right click the hard drive icon goto Properties > left click > on the general Tab > disk clean up. Wait for the system finds all the junk files. Tick as many of the boxes as you can. Confirm the actions. Which browser are you using? If it is Internet Explorer then use the tools > internet options > delete offline files. Set the history option to 5 days and the set the stored cached file to something low 42MB ish. This should help prevent the system from storing loads of small files. Open up your user area Doc and settings. You will have to set the folder options via tools> folder options >view tab so you can see all hidden file extensions and protected operating system files and hidden files and folders. Set the folder view options to details to give you control over the sorting of the files Look for Recent open that. Sort the files by date modified using the bar the top of the column. Delete all the old stuff. Empty the recycled bin as you go.
Or use this
Think about a library with several thousand books. To find a book quickly, it has a catalogue index to enable you to find the right book quickly. They have to be on the shelves in the right order if they are a series of books which you want to read one after the other. With no rubbish to trip you up!
1) Get rid of the rubbish. Disk Cleanup
2) Sort out the card index Scandisk
3) Put the books in order Defragmentation tool
You will find these tools by Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools then select the appropriate tool or
Double click My computer on the desktop to open it. Find the C:drive (Hard Drive) Right click it, a menu will appear, at the bottom of the list is Properties. This will open a window headed 'Something Properties' on which you will find a general tab on which is the disk cleanup button. The Tools tab will give you ERROR Checking (Scandisk) status and DEFRAGMENTATION Status.
Disk clean up
The Disk clean up tool will check the drive for redundant files of different types and invite you to delete them permanently including emptying the recycled bin. Do it!
Scandisk /Error Check
Click the button, a box will appear, tick both boxes and then ‘start’ if it is C drive a window will pop up saying it can’t be done, but would you like it done when the system is restarted click YES. Restart the PC and allow it to run the disk check which has been scheduled.
If errors are found the system will fix any surface errors, this will take much longer. The larger the disk..... well the longer it will take, it could even be an over night job.
Finally Disk Defragmentation
Return to by Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools Click the defragmentation and away it will go. Click on the C drive and then on defragment . Lots of little coloured bars in different colours the more RED the more it wanted doing, some of them will appear to being moved. This will also take a long time. Turn the screen off and go away once it is underway.
The Last Word
It is a routine so it should be done it depends on how you use your system and what for. Heavy usage with pictures and scanned images, music files being created and deleted then often, once a monthish. if not every three months or so but a least once a year. Or you can use the maintenance wizard to run it ever week! Follow the on screen instructions or customise it as you will. The system will have to be up and running and realistically you can't use it whilst it is being done, as it use involves using the hard drive and that is what you are trying to maintain!
This may be a bit "techie", but bear with me. It is not uncommon for poorly written programs to not play together well with other programs. One cause is a program that hogs cpu cycles for really stupid things - usually because the programmer is sloppy, or sometimes just because the program thinks it is too important. This is a problem that is all to common in Windows (ALL VERSIONS - no exceptions) and it clearly gets worse as an install ages. There are some things that you can do however.
First, uninstall all unused and/or unneeded applications, then run the task manager as soon as the system starts. (hit ctrl C and select task manager. In the processes tab, check the show processes from all users and see what process is taking up the most CPU time. It helps if you select the processes to be listed in order of CPU utilization. Only the Null Job should have a high utilization. Any other process that is high on the list is suspect. Try terminating these processes and see what happens. If it solves the problem, try removing the application that owns the process. You won't be able to terminate critical processes, and even if you could, just a restart is all it will cost you.
The other thing to do is look in the services tab. Oftentimes there are a lot of unnecessasry services running. It is always safe to "Stop" them and see if it helps. Again, you can restart them if it does not help. In the worst case, when you restart the computer again they will come back anyway. If you find a suspect service that can be stopped without affecting the operation of the computer, use the service's property tab to permanently disable it. Just remember to write down the old setting before you disable it, just in case you decide to re-enable it later. If you don't know what a service does, google it. Many of the default services can be permanently disabled - and some even should be (such as the remote registry and the messenger services). On a single computer network, the Browser service should also be disabled - there will never be a need for another computer to get a list of computers on your network. Even when there are multiple machines on the network, it should probably be disabled on all but one or 2 machines.
While disk maintenance will almost never solve your problem by itself, it still is a good idea to manage the disk periodically, or at the very least, after finishing with the above steps. Empty all TEMP directories and remove all old downloaded files, cached internet files, old log files, etc. Use the Windows provided disk clean up utility for this. Then use the disk defragmenter. Finally, do a registry clean and registry defrag using one of the commercially available products like RegClean. There may be some free ones available, but be careful with free stuff on Windows unless it's open source and you can certify it. NEVER NEVER NEVER use a product that comes to you unsolicited. I can almost guarantee that you will regret it.
All of this will take some effort, and a bit of homework on yout part, but it does oftentimes fix this long-long-long response/startup time problem. At least is has for me. Your mileage may vary. Good luck!
@gerbil what dragon?
Super, I just googled "common software manager" and found only two instances of that exact term [there must be more out there..?]. Both from memory were to do with voice recogn swares. But apart from that, basic methodology is to track what is running, and what it is a part of. You could use Process Explorer from MSinternals for that. Do a search in it [search tool] before the halt for "common software" as a start.
I just solved this problem on my computer. Do you or did you ever have Skype on your computer? If you do/did then the Skype updater is the problem. My computer would go through its normal bootup process, put the desktop picture up and then stall for 85 seconds. After that it would continue on as normal and no issues after that.
Go into START>>RUN then type in msconfig.exe and press OK. The utility will open. Open the SERVICES area and find SKYPE UPDATER and uncheck the box. Then reboot your computer.
It took me two hours to figure out which service it was but now I don't have to worry about it anymore.
Hopefully this will be your issue too.
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