Speed

[Gibson2012]

Hi there,

I got my Acer Aspire 5734Z laptop as a christmas present in 2010.

RAM - 4096 Mb
Hard Drive - 320 GB

I'm having some problems with its speed. All of a sudden it has completely slowed down when using the internet. I have downloaded ccleaner but after reading many many reviews I decided not to use it to its full potential (only for a few minor things like wiping temp files).

I have also ran a disk fragmentation(?), cleared multiple programs via the control panel, decreased the number of startup programs and am constantly clearing my browser history.

50% of the time i am using my laptop, it's whilst im in bed. As a result of this the air flow to the laptop is poor as it lies on a mattress. It heats up extremely quickly and the battery life is miserable. Will replacing the battery have any effect on its performance or not? Not sure if i fancy spending £40 on a new one if it will function similarly just with a longer battery life.

Task manager is informing me that chrome.exe *32 is using 400,000 K of memory (however this is dispersed over 10 chrome.exe because apparently each tab has its own memory file in chrome) - can someone explain why this is the case when the only thing open in chrome is facebook and this forum???

Getting tired of this now and would really really appreciate some advice.

Thanks

 

[salvage-this]

Have you scanned for any viruses?

Make sure that it has enough airflow. If it is heating up really fast there is a chance that the CPU is underclocking itself due to heat issues. You can download CPUz and check the core speed when it feels slow. See if the core speed is lower than what it should be rated at.

 

[Gibson2012]

Yes i tried, AVG (free version) told me that there weren't any - but i'm not sure if i trust it.

What is CPU underlocking? Is it easily fixable?

Thanks for the help

 

[wolfeking]

underclocking is when the processor (more specifically the BIOS) lowers the speed to reduce the heat. It is only fixable by cooling it down. It is only an issue if the computer is getting hot.

If you have never had the lappy apart to clean the crap out of the heatsink then heat is an issue. You would not believe how much fuzz, dirt, and various other trashes get into he vents until you take it apart to see it.