Cleaning up (ex)wife's laptop suggestions

R

Ready

New Member
I am going to do some clean up on her laptop. She got it a month or two ago. At idle it's using over 1G or memory (page file). I am wondering if there is that much junk running in the background or if vista uses that much?

My XP machine uses only 275mb sitting idle and this seems normal to me.

I also want to remove all the trial junk on it. I don't see "add/remove programs". This vista reminds me of the time I tried my nephews MAC. Uhhh.....I get lost on this thing. When MS tries to make things easier for everyone, it seems like it's harder for me. Even windows explorer is really weird.

Anyway I will start googling all the processes running. Can anyone tell me things I can get rid of for sure, or things I should not touch. Anything I can go into regedit and have not run from startup? Quicken things up....

Thanks.
 
Ready said:
I am going to do some clean up on her laptop. She got it a month or two ago. At idle it's using over 1G or memory (page file). I am wondering if there is that much junk running in the background or if vista uses that much?

My XP machine uses only 275mb sitting idle and this seems normal to me.

I also want to remove all the trial junk on it. I don't see "add/remove programs". This vista reminds me of the time I tried my nephews MAC. Uhhh.....I get lost on this thing. When MS tries to make things easier for everyone, it seems like it's harder for me. Even windows explorer is really weird.

Anyway I will start googling all the processes running. Can anyone tell me things I can get rid of for sure, or things I should not touch. Anything I can go into regedit and have not run from startup? Quicken things up....

Thanks.
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I think Vista uses close to a gig of ram at idle, so you're probably fine. There's many ways to manually uninstall or stop startup programs.
 
download HiJackThis here and post up a log if you get a chance.

this will tell use if you're running anything that isn't necessary, and if you have any useless programs. it's not really necessary though, you can simply remove trial software, and stop startup programs by running MSCONFIG.
 
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Ready said:
Oops, yeah msconfig. I get them mixed up. I use them sooo much.
Click to expand...

Haha yeah be careful with MSCONFIG you can mess up a lot! I would enable a diagnostic startup, from there you can go into your settings and delete useless programs.
 
As for Vista using so much RAM by default, that is normal. Vista has a pre-loading service called Superfetch. Its function is to pre-load portions of your most accessed programs into memory so they will launch quicker when you need them. If this bothers you, you can disable it, but I would not recommend it. There is most likely nothing to worry about.

CCleaner (as already mentioned) is a great program for clearing out unnecessary files left on your computer. It also has a function where you can disable add-on services at startup.
 
Not anything too out of whack - except it seems you have AVG and Norton utilities installed. Do you have both AV programs for the same reason? It is best to use only one AV utility.

Google's desktop search isn't horrible, but you could probably live without it.
 
I used the file that I found you had to use to unistall norton. So that didn't work :mad: Can I just "uninstall" it? I remember in taskmgr it had google 3 times. I should remove that and all instances will be gone?

thanks
 
Yes, you can un-install Norton. It should uninstall from the Add/Remove Programs control panel. You can do the same with Google Desktop and Toolbar. The processes showing in the task manager should also disappear.
 
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