I use Microsofts free AV and it serves me well. They update it regularly and it doesn't diminish computer performance, give it a go just because it's free doesn't mean it's rubbish.

I used to be an I.T Manager for the NHS and I know of lots of people who use it and they haven't complained.

Regards ______________________________
Simon
______________________________

Range Rover Classic 3.5 efi - Gone
Range Rover Classic 3.9 efi - Gone
Range Rover Classic 4.2 LSE - Sadly gone
Land Rover 110 3.5 - Gone
Range Rover P38a 4.0 SE - Pleased it's gone
Range Rover P38a 2.5 DHSE - Just sold
Range Rover L322 4.4 v8 Petrol - Current

I'm surprised no body has mentioned the M word yet. If you are having recurring issues and (like I was) having to spend what was becoming a string of money on this and that I just thought sod it and brought a Mac.

That was 5.5 years ago and its still going strong without any issues. Ram upgrades are simple and SSID are available too.

I know its an outlay but windows is so fragile its laughable.


 405 AB exec seats Baltic and Cirrus
93 RR Classic efi

Remember it's easier to get forgiveness than permission!

Gone in order:
4.4 TDV8 SE - gone to a good home
93 Classic hard dash Plymouth Blue
03 L322 Oslo Blue
2000 Disco TD5 ES Epsom Green
98 P38 Rioja Red
89 Classic Cairngorm Brown

I have been using Microsoft Essentials for around a year now and had no problems with it. We did have some AV program installed by a local computer shop, but the price started to go up and it started to get more pop-ups to buy additional stuff, so I binned it and installed Microsoft Essentials, seems to be working fine.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=5201

Worth noting that Microsoft got their AV technology from the acquisition of Antigen which was extremely well respected in the IT industry.

it doesn't like my computer I tried to download it.. gave up after an hour... it's been cancelling for nearly 2 And it still hasn't finished

This could be a FUBAR moment  Yesterday I couldn't spell Engineer... Today I are one!
Inventor of the 'Guide-o-Matic automatic wheel alignment tool'
Former long term L322 owner, Up/Down graded to a Classic Tractor!

ahem... do I have to mention the M word again?  405 AB exec seats Baltic and Cirrus
93 RR Classic efi

Remember it's easier to get forgiveness than permission!

Gone in order:
4.4 TDV8 SE - gone to a good home
93 Classic hard dash Plymouth Blue
03 L322 Oslo Blue
2000 Disco TD5 ES Epsom Green
98 P38 Rioja Red
89 Classic Cairngorm Brown

Yeah, buy a Mac and all your troubles will cost 5 times as much

The cheapest and arguably one of the best and easiest upgrades you can carry out on an oldish PC is to double or possibly quadruple the RAM.

Have a quick look inside the PC to see what type of RAM is installed then peruse the bay and have a look at the prices, installation is quick and easy and you should see the difference right away. Make sure to ground yourself before you touch anything inside the PC as static is not your friend and can fry your motherboard in an instant, although that would be an excuse for a shiny new PC

Unless you have a motherboard with SATA ports onboard then an SSD is not for you.

Regards ______________________________
Simon
______________________________

Range Rover Classic 3.5 efi - Gone
Range Rover Classic 3.9 efi - Gone
Range Rover Classic 4.2 LSE - Sadly gone
Land Rover 110 3.5 - Gone
Range Rover P38a 4.0 SE - Pleased it's gone
Range Rover P38a 2.5 DHSE - Just sold
Range Rover L322 4.4 v8 Petrol - Current

If you have installed an AV, make sure MS Defender is turned of - otherwise they will compete/bottleneck resources.

Also ,ensure that Windows update has been run.

Minimise the number of icons on the desktop and keep the open windows at a reasonable number

Try upping the size of the page file

How much memory, CPU type and disk size do you have? What OS?

Whilst I agree that more RAM, install SSD, Windows update etc is all good, the OP needs to provide more info on the PC he is talking about if he wants help. Is it a Laptop or a Desktop, what processor does it have, RAM size, Hard Drive type (IDE, SATA)? You need to get to the root cause of the problem before throwing money at the solution. It could be some 'bloatware' is sapping resources or the AV scanning is slowing things down as mentioned in a previous post. Installing an SSD or extra RAM will not solve your problems if you have (unknown) application processes sapping your compute power. Run Task manager as previously advised and by all means send me a PM if you need some help.

I am a Mac user having converted from MS over five years ago and I found installing Sophos AV slowed things down to an unacceptable level so got rid of it (lets not start a Mac vs MS thread!). Mac will not cost you five times as much as per previous post, it just works and a UNIX based operating system is far more efficient that MS Windows. SDV8 AB MY 2019
SDV8 VSE MY 2015 - Gone
5.0 S/C AB MY 2010 - Gone
4.2 S/C VSE MY 2006 - Gone

More ram I just keep on throwing more coal at it

It's a 32 bit AMD processor 2.2Gig
I have 4Gb of Ram installed already... which should be more than ample for that old processor...
I'm running Vista, cos I like it But I'm mad you know, I also brought a Range Rover
It used to be reasonably fast.. but in the last 6 months it's sort of ground to a crawl

However it did speed up when Trend was turned off, much to the safety centres dislike I'm thinking of doing a total uninstall of trend and reloading to see if this helps

I also think that there might be something going on with the internet connection as the laptop was taking it's time to load web pages today.. that's on win7 and it's 2.2gig Quad, so that shouldn't really suffer.. and I hardly use it, and it's got sod all programs loaded on it other than Sage and NavCoder But everytime I do a speed check it says that I';m getting 17.8 Mb so I'm a bit stumped  Yesterday I couldn't spell Engineer... Today I are one!
Inventor of the 'Guide-o-Matic automatic wheel alignment tool'
Former long term L322 owner, Up/Down graded to a Classic Tractor!

If it's a 32bit processor then adding more RAM won't help. The 32bit CPU will only run 32bit Windows and thus it can only address (just under) 4GB of memory

From what you describe I would fit an SSD, - you can still get IDE ones if you don't have SATA ports although I would use SATA and add a board to connect them to. Then I would do a clean install as you already suggested.

Given the cost and time you might be better off buying something new. A barebones thing from Ebuyer isn't too costly, add the SSD and memory you want and load up Windows-10.

Also, the SSD is mainly for the operating system and programs. Keep all your data (photos, documents etc) on a standard disk. Saves a bit of cash.

Have a look at this. 300 quid.
http://www.ebuyer.com/751879-zoostorm-delt...-9873-0187

Ah, good old Vista This was released too early in 2007 to replace the ageing XP and is resource intensive due to it's fudged GUI. Vista went out of mainstream support in April 2012 and will be out of extended support in April 2017. That and your Trend AV and only 4gb of RAM is probably causing the latency. As per previous posts, suggest you replace Trend with MS Essentials, put in another 4gb if possible and upgrade to Windows 7 that is a lot less resource intensive. But do a 'ctrl/alt/del' first and fire up Task Manager to see what is eating your CPU and memory!  SDV8 AB MY 2019
SDV8 VSE MY 2015 - Gone
5.0 S/C AB MY 2010 - Gone
4.2 S/C VSE MY 2006 - Gone

Adding more than 4GB of RAM to a 32 bit system is a complete waste of money. It can't use it.

A 32-bit processor uses 32 bits to refer to the location of each byte of memory. 2^32 = 4.2 billion, which means a memory address that's 32 bits long can only refer to 4.2 billion unique locations (i.e. 4 GB). Take out some memory for the Kernel (google that and why it's needed) and you're at about 3.6GB of usable memory.

ajac8 wrote:

ahem... do I have to mention the M word again?

Is it true that they know what they're going to say, but can't stop themselves  2017 5.0 Autobiography Supercharged
2005 Merc SL350
2005 Disco HSE 2.7 oil burner