Acer Aspire 5517 very slow! Solution?

At a reasonable cost can my aspire be made faster? I have 143 gig of free space on the hd. I have some photos and some movie downloads. Could this be the problem? This thing is really slow! Run w/7 home. One of 3 computers on a network. Thanks in advance.

 

1. If it is really slow like nonresponsive it could be downclocked CPU due to the poor cooling.
2. It could be very fragmented disk.
3. Low RAM?
4. Some background process that takes 100% CPU?
5. Not installed proper graphics drivers?
6. Malware?

Downloads and 143 GB free space should make no difference to the speed of your notebook.

Try this:

1. Does the notebook fan sound like in 5th gear all the time? Can you check CPU temp somewhere? Check the air vents. If the copper grills inside are stuffed with dust CPU will overheat. Most modern mobile CPUs will downclock in order to stay cooler and of course slower.

2. Every time you delete something you leave a "hole" on disk. Every time you write something it will fill holes and then continue to the free space. After millions of deletes/writes (Windows do that all the time) disk becomes fragmented - meaning it is slower because mechanics on disk need to move more around the disk to actually read bits and pieces of your files. Windows 7 does some automatic optimizations and scheduled defragmentation, but you can manually start it and see if it helps. Click Windows key. Start typing Defrag - it will find Disk defragmenteri up above. Click it. Follow the instructions. BTW Disk Defragmenter can be found on rightclick on disk/volume name in Windows Explorer (My Disk (C for example) then Properties and then tab Tools.

3.

Restart your notebook and don't start anything.

Right click on start bar and Start Task Manager. Go to Performance.

Then check Memory: read Physical Memory (MB) under Total. Note that number. Now check Free number. Is it low in comparison to your Total?

Check Memory bar above. If it is almost full to the top it means you are low on free RAM. RAM is working space for your laptop - if it is low or always used additional space will be used on your disk. And that is 1000 times slower.

Click on Processes tab. Click on Show processes from all users and then Memory (Private working set) column heading. What are your biggest memory hogs?

4. Right click on start bar and Start Task Manager. Go to Performance. Check CPU usage when nothing is started or running. It should be 2-5% at the most and normally around 0-1%. If it is not go to Processes tab, click on Show processes from all users and then CPU column heading. It will sort all running processes by the CPU usage. Which is first and how much does it use? It should be System Idle Process and around 97-99%.

5. Right click on desktop. Screen resolution. Click Advanced settings. Check Adapter and then click Properties and tab driver. Check driver provider, dates etc... If it is generic Windows driver it could be slow. Find drivers online and update.

6. Do you have any antimalware? I recommend Windows security essentials. Go here: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ and install it. Let it update its database for new threats and then Scan your computer. See what happens.

 

Suggestion 0: Did you ever reinstall windows, or did you use it preconfigured from Acer? I know Acer puts tons of useless applications onto your machine by default - useless crap that eats lots of RAM and CPU cycles just for sitting there.

That would be the first thing (actually the 0th, hehe) I would do - if you can't do it yourself, ask a friend. Be sure that you make a backup before! Very cheap, too, only costs time!

Suggestion 1: less time, still very cheap - get more RAM - always a speed up, but maybe hardly noticeable if RAM shortage is not one of your main problems

Suggestion 2: get an SSD - not so cheap - but makes old hardware run very very fast again

 

Really slow?

Then please check your Bios if the Sata controller is set to AHCI or IDE. Don't change anything, just report.

In case it's in IDE mode, then check the IDE channels if UDMA is enabled. Report back the current transfer mode.

Michael