My Struggling Laptop

J

johnci

New Member
Hello all, I am new to the forum, and am hoping someone with some more experience can give me a tip on my problem.

I have an HP TouchSmart tx2, here's my specs:

Vista 64bit
AMD Turion X2 Dual-core 2.1GHz
4.0G RAM
285G Hard Drive (80 of which is being used)
I also have a Seagate Free Agent External HD (296 of 298Gb Free)

My problem is that I have just a slight lag sometimes. I can live with the little notifications letting me know downloads are complete in my icon tray being "jumpy," but what I can't deal with is poor video quality. The frames are too slow, the audio is choppy, and it doesn't matter where the video is coming from. The same thing happens when I am in Google Videochat, the lag is awful. I don't think its a problem with the video driver because sometimes there is lag running other things. I will admit I don't know how to check to see if I need to update my drivers.

Another snag I thought might be causing the issue is my CPU usage, which right now if fluctuating between 60-90% with just firefox and task manager open. Physical memory is 50%, and there are 89 processes running. Is all this normal?

Could the external hard drive that is always plugged in be drawing resources away from CPU speed? I notice the same problems even when the HD is disconnected once in a while.

Thanks in advance for any help.

-John
 
I would open the "run" box and type msconfig. when this opens, go to the startup tab and uncheck anything you don't need open on startup. this will free up significant amounts of memory and cpu usage depending on how much you disable
 
marsbars162 said:
I would open the "run" box and type msconfig. when this opens, go to the startup tab and uncheck anything you don't need open on startup. this will free up significant amounts of memory and cpu usage depending on how much you disable
Click to expand...

Make sure you don't disable your anti virus/firewall/protection because it won't boot if you disable it.
 
No luck thus far. Also uninstalled and reinstalled Flash with no success, so it's not a driver problem, which I assumed since I have small lags on things either than video.
 
Sounds like it needs to be optimized. Meaning:

uninstalling programs you don't use, (HP stuck quite a few on there before you purchased it). Things like HP advisor, HP update, the HP Wireless lan tool etc, those can all go.

Stop things from starting up with your computer, type msconfig in the start menu, hit enter. Under the startup tab if you don't know what it is, google the exact program name to find out what it's doing and if it needs to be there.

update antivirus, I'd avoid something like Norton and get something like Avast (ie, don't use an antivirus you have to pay for)

also maybe cleaning up temporary files and such by typing "disk cleanup" in the start menu and running that little program

Also, since you have an external hard drive, I'd take everything important to you on your laptop, and make a copy of it onto your external. It's great peace of mind
 
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hey buddy .... try using registry defrag and disk defrag tools ....
get a copy of tune up utilities 2009 (they offer 15 days trail offer) install it and run it.... click on 1click maintainance icon on ur desktop.... after that a scan will start, wait until while system is scanned for errors. after the scan is finished click correct problems, and after d prblm solving is done, close the program. Next, start tune up utilities and click speed tab at the starting page. follow the instruction with the screen following it.... check others tabs too they might help..
most imp thing keep ur antiviruse database updated .... cauz some viruses uses system resources to slow up the system
 
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