Question folks, since my computer has slowed significantly as of late,

[Paper Roses]

Does the fact that I have a lot of sites in 'favorites' (bookmarks) have any relation to the slowdown? Do I need to go in to clean house?
I've checked everything else and all seems to be fine.
Thanks,
PR

[canetoad]

1. You probably need to do some housekeeping

But the number of bookmarks you have is nothing at all to do with it.

[Paper Roses]

2. Thanks, will do so today. n/t

[IDemo]

3. A few thoughts

I'm assuming it's a Windows machine, first off?

- If you haven't run a defrag in a while, do so (Start/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Defragmenter in Windows 7, something similar in XP). Even if the scan tells you "no defragmentation is necessary at this time" (or something like that) go ahead anyway if the fragmentation is over 2%.

- Run a virus scan. If your machine has been hit with a Worm or Trojan, it may be being used to serve spam.

- Disable or uninstall any Firefox plugins you don't need or use on a regular basis. Also, try not to keep a ton of tabs open at one time if you don't need to.

- Run Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Delete) and take a look at the 'Applications' tab to see if any programs are running you're not aware of. Also look at the 'Processes' tab and take note of the memory being used; you can right-click and end any of them, although many are Windows components so use some caution here.

- Try a Windows Restore to a point in time when the machine wasn't slowing down.

- Finally, hard drives do begin to experience wear after a few years. If it is sounding different now than it has or simply has a lot of miles on it, you might want to consider upgrading. I saw a 2TB drive somewhere online yesterday for $89.99, so they have really come down lately.

[blogslut]

4. Use these two programs

Revo Uninstaller - http://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_uninstaller_free_download.html

Revo Uninstaller allows you to not only uninstall unwanted software safely, but also enables you to remove those obnoxious residual files and registry settings that often remain afterwards.

CCleaner - http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

This program is awesome! CCleaner stands for Crap Cleaner and that's exactly what this software does - removes crap files that your computer simply doesn't need. A few tips:

1. Designate a directory where you can save a restore point and always choose to save one when you run this software - I save mine within the CCleaner directory.

2. When I perform the scan/remove operation that is in/under the "Cleaner - Windows" menu/tab, I tick all the boxes except the one labeled "Wipe Free Space". It's not that I am against wiping the free space on my hard drive, it's just that the operation takes freaking forever.

3. I also perform the scan operation in/under the "Cleaner - Applications" tab and I tick all the boxes before doing so.

4. I also perform the scan/delete operation in the "Registry" menu, ticking all the obxes.


I have been using both Revo Unistaller and CCleaner for years and have never had a problem with them messing up my computer. CCleaner is especially nice for tidying up a messy hard drive - which is often responsible for a slow computer.

[pokerfan]

5. Is it just your browser slowing down or the entire computer

If it's the entire computer, check out the suggestions upstream.

If it's just the web browser, then I did have a problem about four years ago. Firefox was slamming my (single core) CPU to 100% and slowing to a crawl. I went through all of my extensions. Dug through startup apps and processes and then tried creating a new browser profile. Solved everything. I never bothered digging through the profile (which holds your cookies, history, bookmarks, etc.) to find out what exactly was the root cause but apparently something in there was corrupted or infected.

Not long after that, I said goodbye to Windows and switched to Linux, at least at home.