sb67 Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 After around 20-30 mins while browsing the net, mainly on here, my laptop slows down massively, the cursor wont move, buttons cant be clicked and pages wont respond, then sometimes the cursor seems to move randomly, as if catching up with my previous movements. even the task manager doesn't respond. This doesn't happen every time I use it though. What I usually do is turn off my wi-fi wait for it all to close down then shut the laptop down. After that it's working again. I seem to remember reading that it's possible that if something like that happens someone could be trying to access my stuff remotely, don't know how true that could be but I run Malware and antivirus checks but it's never shown anything. Can anybody tell me what could be happening? Many thanks. Steve. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Ian J. Posted March 29, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted March 29, 2019 Sounds to me like it could be the hard drive is very busy and blocking activity. Maybe it's attempting a virus scan, or possibly it's busy indexing? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkC Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 My good lady's laptop was displaying similar issues. I eventually discovered that it was an add-on to Firefox that was not wholly compatible with the latest Firefox update that was causing the problem. Disabled the add-on and all was well. Worth looking at your browser of choice & what's on that? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold beast66606 Posted March 29, 2019 RMweb Gold Share Posted March 29, 2019 39 minutes ago, Ian J. said: Sounds to me like it could be the hard drive is very busy and blocking activity. Maybe it's attempting a virus scan, or possibly it's busy indexing? Possibly running a root kit scan which can really hammer a disk Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonny777 Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 1 hour ago, sb67 said: After around 20-30 mins while browsing the net, mainly on here, my laptop slows down massively, the cursor wont move, buttons cant be clicked and pages wont respond, then sometimes the cursor seems to move randomly, as if catching up with my previous movements. even the task manager doesn't respond. This doesn't happen every time I use it though. What I usually do is turn off my wi-fi wait for it all to close down then shut the laptop down. After that it's working again. I seem to remember reading that it's possible that if something like that happens someone could be trying to access my stuff remotely, don't know how true that could be but I run Malware and antivirus checks but it's never shown anything. Can anybody tell me what could be happening? Many thanks. Steve. You ought to be able to run a system monitor program, which would show all the processes running at the current time of slowing down. This ought to show if any routine software is scanning the disk and using up the majority of the CPU time, (or if any third party is trying to access your files - which is unlikely unless you are a Russian spy). My thoughts on Firefox as a browser are basically unprintable, and I find it so badly designed - with extra subroutines seemingly bolted onto the main program - that eventually it will fragment the RAM to such an extent over each user session, that the computer cannot find enough contiguous free space to place individual instruction sets. This results in the processor having to dodge back and forth across the memory in order to find each part of the routine it is trying to complete. Re-starting the laptop will have the effect of clearing the RAM directory and the processor will see it as empty space to install the programs again. You don't say how much RAM is installed, but if you can double it you will probably find the problems vanish. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sb67 Posted March 29, 2019 Author Share Posted March 29, 2019 Ok, thanks guys, how do I run a monitor programme or check if any scans are taking place? I'm using MS Edge as my browser as well. Steve. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold beast66606 Posted March 29, 2019 RMweb Gold Share Posted March 29, 2019 (edited) If you have anti-virus, check the settings, look for something like "scheduled scans" Edge is a slow browser. I use FireFox for everything. what version of Windows are you running ? Edited March 29, 2019 by beast66606 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonny777 Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 Sadly, I'm not familiar with Windows machines; but presumably something such as this page will help with PCs? https://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/feature/Windows-7-system-monitoring-Resource-Monitor-Performance-Monitor Sorry if it is the wrong system. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sb67 Posted March 29, 2019 Author Share Posted March 29, 2019 Not sure what system I'm on, I think it's windows 10. I'm not on my laptop for a couple of days but I can check soon as I'm home. steve. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold beast66606 Posted March 29, 2019 RMweb Gold Share Posted March 29, 2019 Press the start (Windows) key and R together to bring up run, then type winver and press return Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonny777 Posted March 30, 2019 Share Posted March 30, 2019 17 hours ago, sb67 said: Not sure what system I'm on, I think it's windows 10. I'm not on my laptop for a couple of days but I can check soon as I'm home. steve. There seem to be lots of useful web articles on how to monitor Windows 10. I found this one - https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-use-windows-10s-resource-monitor-to-track-memory-usage/ I hope you find the cause, but I suspect it is mostly memory fragmentation as I mentioned above. (Probably not relevant - but I had a problem with an old Mac which was suddenly going extremely slow at times. I discovered eventually that it was due to a faulty temperature sensor monitoring the CPU which insisted (incorrectly) that the motherboard was overheating and was forcing the system into a kind of semi-shut-down mode in order to cool everything down. Unfortunately, sometimes when the "computer says no" there is not a lot can be done. My only way of trying to fix it was to run a fan-override program which forced the fans to go at 6000rpm from startup and keep the CPU well below its operating temperature - but that was incredibly noisy and almost drove me mad.) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium polybear Posted March 31, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted March 31, 2019 One other thing to check will be the cooling fans - you'll ideally need to drop the back off for this (easy). Don't go prodding around with you fingers on circuit boards etc. as some components will be static sensitive. Check the fans run ok and also check the fan and all vents for blockage with dust and fibres. It can be surprising just how much can accumulate, and when the pc overheats it really doesn't like it. HTH 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sb67 Posted March 31, 2019 Author Share Posted March 31, 2019 On 29/03/2019 at 18:35, beast66606 said: Press the start (Windows) key and R together to bring up run, then type winver and press return Thanks, it is windows 10. Steve. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sb67 Posted March 31, 2019 Author Share Posted March 31, 2019 Thanks for your help guys, I found the resource monitor but I guess if my laptop's working fine it's got nothing to show. I'll have to try and look at it when my laptop slows. I cant find any scheduled scans in my anti virus either. Steve. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sb67 Posted April 2, 2019 Author Share Posted April 2, 2019 (edited) Managed to open the resource monitor while the laptop was slow, there seemed to be loads of stuff going on, can anybody help as to what is significant and is anything unusual? Steve. Edited April 2, 2019 by sb67 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Ian J. Posted April 2, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 2, 2019 You'd need to let us see a list of the items that are using the CPU, as there are myriads of programs that could affect performance, and not always with sensible names. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sb67 Posted April 2, 2019 Author Share Posted April 2, 2019 Ok, thanks Ian, I'll do my best to get a screenshot, could take a while though. Thanks for your help. Steve. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sb67 Posted April 3, 2019 Author Share Posted April 3, 2019 On 02/04/2019 at 07:13, Ian J. said: You'd need to let us see a list of the items that are using the CPU, as there are myriads of programs that could affect performance, and not always with sensible names. As you say Ian there are so many things running with some strange names, that is only a part of what's going on I think. Does that help at all? At that time the laptop was working ok Steve. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Ian J. Posted April 3, 2019 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 3, 2019 Nothing obvious there. What you will need to do is open up the resource monitor when the computer's struggling, and sort the list by CPU, descending, to bring to the top of the list those items using CPU. Then take a screenshot and post it here so we can see what's using CPU. It will also help if you can widen the image and description columns so we can read more of the file name and information. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sb67 Posted April 3, 2019 Author Share Posted April 3, 2019 Ok thanks Ian. Steve. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Suzie Posted April 3, 2019 Share Posted April 3, 2019 Memory usage might be more important. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Harlequin Posted April 3, 2019 RMweb Gold Share Posted April 3, 2019 Much more likely to be disk usage, as others have said, than cpu usage. And as Suzie says, disk usage can go through the roof if your machine runs out of memory. It’s called thrashing and it can happen if your machine has been in use for a while and memory has been used up by programs. Did you say how much RAM you’ve got? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Butler Henderson Posted April 3, 2019 Share Posted April 3, 2019 My laptop slowing is usually an indication of a windows update downloading Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold beast66606 Posted April 3, 2019 RMweb Gold Share Posted April 3, 2019 How much disk space do you have free ? - if you are low on space then Windows will not be able to manage it's resources properly, which will result in lots and lots of swapping. Windows Key + R and then msinfo32 will show the hardware config. Windows Key + E then click on this computer will show the drives and how much space is free. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sb67 Posted April 3, 2019 Author Share Posted April 3, 2019 I'm not sure how much RAM I got but I'll try and find out. Steve. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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