Everytime I reboot, after about 15 minutes, my laptop instantly starts to run SLOW

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cheezburger

New Member
I've had this laptop for a little bit, and it's by no means great (it's a Dell Inspiron 1501). I've recently realized that my computer is much, much slower than it was when I first received it. I tried turning off some of the startup programs and rebooting, and when the laptop first came back on, it was much faster than it was. But, after around 15 minutes or so, the computer started running loudly for a seond, and after that, everything was really slow. I tried rebooting again, and the same thing happened, everytime I've tried since. I don't know how to fix it at all and it's really annoying because I'm seeing what my computer can do for a while, then it just stops working well. The most obvious thing I've noticed is that I can watch a Youtube video in HD with no trouble when it first starts, but after it slows down, the framerate on the same video is ridiculously low.

PS: Earlier this week, this fairly transparent blue vertical stripe has been on my screen and it won't go away. It's only really visible on a website or somewhere else with a solid color background, but it's still pretty annoying. Any idea how to get rid of it?
 
What are the specs on the laptop?

As for the screen problem, it's probably either a bad connection between the monitor and the motherboard, or the screen itself is going bad...

In regards to the slowing down issue, the hard drive might be beginning to die, especially if the laptop is as old as I think it is... (How old is it anyway?)
 
DCIScouts said:
What are the specs on the laptop?

As for the screen problem, it's probably either a bad connection between the monitor and the motherboard, or the screen itself is going bad...

In regards to the slowing down issue, the hard drive might be beginning to die, especially if the laptop is as old as I think it is... (How old is it anyway?)
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I got it around a year ago, but it may be a little older than that.

It has a 1.80 ghz AMD processor, 1gb ram, Vista, some crappy ATI graphics card, and around 45 total GB harddrive, with only like 4gb left.
 
Yeah, that one's more around 3 years old. Try getting some more RAM for it, as that's the bare minimum that you should have for Vista, and you should see a significant difference with bumping up the RAM.
 
DCIScouts said:
Yeah, that one's more around 3 years old. Try getting some more RAM for it, as that's the bare minimum that you should have for Vista, and you should see a significant difference with bumping up the RAM.
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I'm probably going to downgrade it to XP because I don't like Vista. Would this help at all? I'm still probably going to buy a bit of RAM soon also.

The main problem is that when I turn on my computer at first, it's actually pretty fast, then it just decides to slow down after about 15 minutes for whatever reason, though. Would downgrading or adding RAM help with that at all (I have no idea what's causing it)?
 
Getting more RAM should help regardless of what you do with the OS. My guess is that the RAM is probably what's causing the issues with the computer currently.
 
DCIScouts said:
Getting more RAM should help regardless of what you do with the OS. My guess is that the RAM is probably what's causing the issues with the computer currently.
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Alright. I'll get some more RAM then. I'm not sure how it'll help fix the problem of slowing down, but if it doesn't, at least it won't be as slow afterwards.
 
What I'm suspecting is happening is that since Vista takes up so much RAM, that the small amount of remaining RAM is being quickly filled up by what you are doing... This makes the computer run slower. Just a theory, and if that doesn't fix it the only other thing I would suggest is reformatting/reinstalling Windows. If it hasn't been done in 3 years, it's definitely time to do it.
 
^ Sounds right. Vista does scale its RAM usage based on your system, IIRC, but it's not really comfortable unless you've got about 2GB. 1.5GB would probably be ok if you're just web browsing though. In the meantime, grab a flash drive and configure it for Readyboost. This dumps your extra memory to the flash drive instead of the hard drive, which can speed things up.

Also, make sure to trim down any crapware you have running. What AV do you have? McAffee and Norton both take huge amounts of RAM for AV programs.

Whatever you do, don't switch back to XP. Vista is getting its bugs worked out, and it's MUCH more advanced and secure than XP will ever hope to be. Sure, it's bloated, compared to XP, but it does a crapload more than XP does. Heck, some of its features are better/more elaborate than Windows 7's.
 
DCIScouts said:
What I'm suspecting is happening is that since Vista takes up so much RAM, that the small amount of remaining RAM is being quickly filled up by what you are doing... This makes the computer run slower. Just a theory, and if that doesn't fix it the only other thing I would suggest is reformatting/reinstalling Windows. If it hasn't been done in 3 years, it's definitely time to do it.
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I just added an extra gig of ram, so it has two now. It is faster, but the same problem is happening where the computer runs really loud for a second or two and then starts running very slow.

I think it's the hard drive making the noise, so maybe it's really old and needs to be replaced, or it doesn't have enough free space? It has like 6bg out of around 45 total remaining.
 
cheezburger said:
I just added an extra gig of ram, so it has two now. It is faster, but the same problem is happening where the computer runs really loud for a second or two and then starts running very slow.

I think it's the hard drive making the noise, so maybe it's really old and needs to be replaced, or it doesn't have enough free space? It has like 6bg out of around 45 total remaining.
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Well if it is a 45 gig hdd, then it is old. So that could easily need replaced.
 
Well, I've been looking around, and what I think the problem is is that the CPU eventually overheats every time I start my computer after a while, and so it's underclocking itself and making the fan spin faster, making my computer slow and loud.

I've done a few virus scans, and nothing is showing up. It's most often to overheat when I'm doing something like playing a game or watching a youtube video in HD, but even if I'm not, the problem will still show itself eventually. I don't think my CPU should be overheating this easily though, which I think is the problem. Could the cooling system be malfunctioning, or is something being blocked/clogged inside the computer?
 
cheezburger said:
Well, I've been looking around, and what I think the problem is is that the CPU eventually overheats every time I start my computer after a while, and so it's underclocking itself and making the fan spin faster, making my computer slow and loud.

I've done a few virus scans, and nothing is showing up. It's most often to overheat when I'm doing something like playing a game or watching a youtube video in HD, but even if I'm not, the problem will still show itself eventually. I don't think my CPU should be overheating this easily though, which I think is the problem. Could the cooling system be malfunctioning, or is something being blocked/clogged inside the computer?
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I have no knowledge about cooling systems. However, you should take apart your computer enough to clean out the fan every once and a while. If it is over heating you think, I would recommend trying to clean the fan and make sure it is working correctly. Also, make sure the vents for the fan are not clogged.
 
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