Vista is killing me

[Techrecruit]

I've got an older machine at home that I mainly just use for surfing the web and goofing off and I loaded Vista Home Prem about 6 months ago (from XP Pro) and it just seems that it's getting slower and slower. Thinks for atleast a few seconds between every page. It's driving me nuts.

The machine is about 2.5yrs old and is a Sony Vaio that I typically do a full refresh with the restoration cd's about every 6 months so it gets wiped clean of any adware, etc...

Any suggestions?

[fizban2]

some specs on the machines would help us better gauge what the issue is

[mau-yong]

What is the CPU speed and how much memory do you have?

[marxo]

Hmm... Defragmenting, cleaning up your HDD, and stuff... Do you clean up regularly?

[charlice]

If you want to experience good performance. You need to make sure you have very big memory and fast CPU. Unfortunate, you have a laptop, that means you can't change your CPU now. Add memory is the best choice. 512MB is the minimun require. 2GB is the best choise....

[Techrecruit]

Sorry for not finishing my post and appreciate the offers to help. The machine that i'm having trouble with is a Gateway Laptop that's about 4 or so yrs old. I don't run much of anything on it and just use it on the couch for surfing the web and checking email so no heavy software usage. I'll have to look and see what the tech specs are on it.

I did some research and some people were saying that you can't revert from Vista back to XP very easily. Any truth in this?

[spacesurfer]

i don't understand, in your first post, you said it was a 2.5 year old sony vaio and in the 6th post you said it was a 4 year old gateway. so which is having the problem?

and yes, we do need the specs. right click on my computer for the cpu speed and memory.

[knowitall_wannabe]

I would figure that "both" computers simply don't have enough a** to run Vista properly. Average PCs haven't been ready for prime time in running Vista until around late 2007 or early 2008, so anything older than that will probably stumble on Vista. Best suggestions I could offer would to uncheck your System Restore and stop-then-disable Superfetch and Readyboost in Adminstrative Tools/Services located in your Control Panel.

I anticipate another poster coming along and saying, "Shut down Superfetch? Are you stupid or something?"

You know, as if the free world is fully dependent on that bell-and-whistle piece of unnecessary Vista dung.

Edited January 25, 2009 by knowitall_wannabe

[haunting]

Actually new version of Microsoft are always Hardware-Hungry. You need to purchase new computer for every new version of Windows. Although Vista is slow but it looks great. Just addup some more RAM (Random Access Memory) to fully enjoy it.

Haunting

[MageJubi]

Did you run task manager to see how much memory is being used? Does it show any unfamiliar programs running in the background?--CPU should show increased use if so. I have 4 gig of ram, and 35% is used at a standstill--that's 1.41 gig (I do have a lot of programs installed, but other than AV/FW etc., all are idle) CPU is using no more than 3% at standstill (3.0 Wolfdale, no oc). If you only have say, 512 of ram, that'd be like driving with the brakes on. You mentioned wiping it every 6 months--how often do you clean out the Internet cache, cookies, history, etc. in the meantime? How often is is defragged? How long since the hard drive has been REALLY formatted. Most drives don't have that long of a lifespan under normal use--warranty can be 1-5 years. If you're not ready for a new rig, and there are no other apparent causes (trojans virus's, etc.) try to upgrade the memory, and get a fresh hard drive--they are just to inexpensive now-a-days not to. But, that's just my two cents.