Notebook Tune Up
Lately, my notebook has been running slowly. I mean seriously slow, like it's taking over five minutes just to boot slow, and I wasn't sure why.
I take a look at it, and I decide to clean it up. I take some things out of the boot sequence. Rerun the antivirus scan and come up empty. I also run two antipyware scans (which come up with the usual cookies, and nothing else. I even do a rootkit scan, and come up empty.
At this point, I'm a tad bit confused. Clearly, there is some junk that I need to decrapify, but the toolbox is lacking the right tool. I toyed with the idea of a new laptop with the Black Friday deals coming next. However, aside from the processor, the new notebook won't be specced out any better than what I currently have (at least in the sub-$500 price range I could go for), and aside from this issue, my Averatec runs pretty trouble free. Also, it runs Win XP Home, and until I hear better things about Vista, I'm not jumping into that ocean.
I even tried playing with Linux. Oldster has been talking about Linux Puppy, which is a stripped down version, and loves older machines. For whatever reason, the notebook wouldn't load the disc and use the OS as a live disc. Maybe my boot sequence is off, or maybe it's something else; I'm still not sure on this one and while it was worth a shot, it wasn't worth devoting weeks to.
So, what to do. Well, instead of some OS surgery, I went for the nuclear strike. I grabbed the system discs, and reloaded the entire Windows XP which took around 40 minutes. Of course, I'm still regrabbing drivers, and other software. It's a shame that this is the only solution, but now the notebook is as fast as when new.
What's the moral here? Before ditching the current hardware, try an operating system reload. The performance boost just might surprise you, and extend the life of the computer for a while longer, which suits me just fine.
--Jonas
I take a look at it, and I decide to clean it up. I take some things out of the boot sequence. Rerun the antivirus scan and come up empty. I also run two antipyware scans (which come up with the usual cookies, and nothing else. I even do a rootkit scan, and come up empty.
At this point, I'm a tad bit confused. Clearly, there is some junk that I need to decrapify, but the toolbox is lacking the right tool. I toyed with the idea of a new laptop with the Black Friday deals coming next. However, aside from the processor, the new notebook won't be specced out any better than what I currently have (at least in the sub-$500 price range I could go for), and aside from this issue, my Averatec runs pretty trouble free. Also, it runs Win XP Home, and until I hear better things about Vista, I'm not jumping into that ocean.
I even tried playing with Linux. Oldster has been talking about Linux Puppy, which is a stripped down version, and loves older machines. For whatever reason, the notebook wouldn't load the disc and use the OS as a live disc. Maybe my boot sequence is off, or maybe it's something else; I'm still not sure on this one and while it was worth a shot, it wasn't worth devoting weeks to.
So, what to do. Well, instead of some OS surgery, I went for the nuclear strike. I grabbed the system discs, and reloaded the entire Windows XP which took around 40 minutes. Of course, I'm still regrabbing drivers, and other software. It's a shame that this is the only solution, but now the notebook is as fast as when new.
What's the moral here? Before ditching the current hardware, try an operating system reload. The performance boost just might surprise you, and extend the life of the computer for a while longer, which suits me just fine.
--Jonas
posted by digitaldoc at 7:22 AM
1 Comments:
So should we enter one for EACH picture, or is it a limit of one for all.
Mike
Where did you get that picture of oldster before his morning coffee? :)
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