Compute experts need your help please

[SquarePeg]

Got handed down a laptop (from my 13 year old who upgraded) that should be faster than my old Dell. Dell is 5 years old, cheap model Inspiron with i3 processor, had 4GB RAM and 500 GB HD which was basically full. The hand me down is a Toshiba with an i5, 6GB RAM and 800GB HD with over 600GB available space.

The problem is that I don't know what my daughter did to this laptop but it is incredibly slow. There seems to always be something running in the background that is slowing it down. The cursor ALWAYS has the spinning circle next to it.

I'm not sure what I can remove and what is essential. There seems to be a lot of Toshiba bloatware including the dreaded Norton Antivirus which I have not been able to remove since it is asking me for a password but we have never used Norton, only Webroot (which may be the program that is constantly running... however I have the same program on the Dell and never had that issue).

Here is a screen shot of the programs that show running as well as all of the Toshiba programs that are installed. Any advice on how to start this over or uninstall all of this stuff without crippling the laptop? Thanks in advance for your input.

 

[tecboy]

Have you tried defragmenting the hard drive?

 

[astroNikon]

Probably tons of ad trackers, viruses and the like.

Do you have the original operating install disk ?
I'd start over from scratch with a new OS install.

I regularly clean my kids computers but I use a variety of anti-virus, trojan software to clean all varieties of junk off of it.

 

[tecboy]

oops, I meant defragmenting and hard drive. It is the spell check errors.

 

[ClickAddict]

Your Chrome is running very high. (Over a 1 GB in just two open sessions) Probably the culprit. Although Chrome is legit, Malware may have latched on as an add-on. Since it's new to you, I'd suggest a reinstall of the OS and start from there. Would get rid of all the junk it has picked up.

 

[tirediron]

Webroot Secure is using a LOT of CPU time; you need to find out why, but as others have said, likely a lot of spy/mal/adware. A fresh install will solve almost all your problems.

 

[Dave442]

I agree, reinstall Windows and start from scratch.

 

[robbins.photo]

If you don't have the reinstall disk, you can also try this to help clean out some of the garbage running in background.

Click on the start menu and in the box at the bottom type:

msconfig

Hit enter and run msconfig. Click on the startup tab, it will give you a list of everything that starts when windows starts. Anything you don't recognize, take the check mark out of the check box. When you've gone through the whole list, hit apply, then ok.

Reboot the machine. This will prevent the programs you uncheck from starting with windows and it can make a huge difference in how fast the machine runs because frankly 98% of the crap thats on that list doesn't really need to start and be running in background all the time anyway. It's just a huge waste of limited resources.

If you find that you've unchecked a program you actually want to start with windows, you can run msconfig again and just put the checkmark back.

Just be sure your doing this with the startup tab - you don't want to mess with anything in the services tab.

Hope that helps

 

[table1349]

Me Three. Wipe it, and reinstall the OS.

 

[SquarePeg]

Probably tons of ad trackers, viruses and the like.

Do you have the original operating install disk ?
I'd start over from scratch with a new OS install.

I regularly clean my kids computers but I use a variety of anti-virus, trojan software to clean all varieties of junk off of it.

No disc - I don't think it came with one but I didn't do the original set up, my cousin did it for her. I do know how to do a system restore from a specific point but that's about my limit on technical expertise...

oops, I meant defragmenting and hard drive. It is the spell check errors.

It took me a few but I did translate that! Tried a system diagnostic and it didn't detect any defrag need, I think I may have done one a few months ago when I originally started my plan to move to this laptop but it took me a while to move all my photo files and other stuff to the cloud and then was traveling so it's a bit fuzzy on if/when.... the laptop has been sitting off line since then.

Your Chrome is running very high. (Over a 1 GB in just two open sessions) Probably the culprit. Although Chrome is legit, Malware may have latched on as an add-on. Since it's new to you, I'd suggest a reinstall of the OS and start from there. Would get rid of all the junk it has picked up.

I did uninstall and reinstall Chrome today but that didn't fix the issue. How do you do a reinstall of the OS? I don't mind starting from scratch as the only programs that I need that she has on here are PSE and Microsoft which I can add back...

Webroot Secure is using a LOT of CPU time; you need to find out why, but as others have said, likely a lot of spy/mal/adware. A fresh install will solve almost all your problems.

More details on "a fresh install" please!

Thank you all for your responses.

 

[SquarePeg]

OK, I'll have to dig the laptop box out of the garage and see if the disc is in there. Do all new laptops come with a OS disc? Is this something that I can download to a disc from Toshiba or Microsoft?

 

[tirediron]

OK, I'll have to dig the laptop box out of the garage and see if the disc is in there. Do all new laptops come with a OS disc? Is this something that I can download to a disc from Toshiba or Microsoft?

Actually, for the last 5 or more years, most laptops have had a partition on the hard drive with the Windows image on it. If you look at "My Computer" do you see a second (or third, or however manyith) drive, probably 10Gb or less in size? It is likely called something like "Restore".

 

[ClickAddict]

Typically they did come with a reinstall disc. Keep in mind if it's the manufacturers disc it will contain the OS and drivers you need but will also have plenty of Toshiba (and partners...Norton antivirus for instance) applications as well which you could live without so if you have the option of unchecking any of those during install go ahead. You can download Win 10 for free, It runs much better than win 8 did.

 

[table1349]

First check with your daughter or cousin to see where the original disk(s) are that came with the computer. Most do or did. Newer computers now often come with the restore disk in a partition on the hard drive. If that is the case then you will need to get on line and find out from Toshiba the steps to do a clean install for that model of laptop.

If you have disks you should have a boot disk (cd). You insert the disk in the drive, start the laptop and it should boot into DOS. From their you type in Format C: and hit enter. You will be asked at least twice if you want to proceed as this will wipe all data from the computer. Select yes each time. Once the disk has been reformatted you can remove the boot disk, put in the OS install disk or PC install disk, what ever came with the computer and restart the computer. It will then pull-up the OS install program upon re-booting. Follow the prompts to install the OS fresh. From there depending on whether you have an OS disk or a PC install disk, you may or may not have to reinstall the programs. Any program that did not come with the PC at purchase will have to be reinstalled.

 

[astroNikon]

as mentioned above, Check with your Cousin first to see if they have an original install disk the the laptop.

If that doesn't work you can download Windows 10 for free.
But being a laptop they normally have drivers that aren't in a clean OS install.
You'll have to go through the computer devices and find each specific driver (video, network, etc) as it may not be in a new install download. I've found this the most annoying about reinstalling laptops if a clean OS isn't available in a partition or disk.