Best way to clean a slow laptop?

Tennis987

Estimable
Sep 9, 2015
4
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4,510
So my stepmother complained of a slow PC and i always assume it is full of viruses, bloatware, random apps, etc. Since I am going for a CIS degree my brother who is more tech savvy than me told me to fix this since i need to learn. Well idk about you but what I would do to fix her laptop would be

1. Reinstall and run AVG

2. Reinstall and run Malwarebytes

3. Disk Cleanup and CCleaner to jut clean up unwanted files.

My question is, what would you do on top of this? She has windows 8 if that matters.
 
Solution
Take a look at what her system is doing in the background.

Run Task Manager and Resource Monitor.

How apps, processes, and services are using and sharing resources (CPU, Memory, Disk, etc...)

Figure out the bottlenecks and what may be causing them.

May just needed some software and driver updates to improve the performance. Or a configuration tweak or two.

First watch, learn, take notes. Research (google) what you find and look for fixes.

Avoid downloading any software that claims it will fix any given problem. Most of those products will pop up no matter what the problem may be.

As always be sure all her data is backed up and safely copied to another device. Verify the copies.

Change only one thing at a time and keep notes...
Take a look at what her system is doing in the background.

Run Task Manager and Resource Monitor.

How apps, processes, and services are using and sharing resources (CPU, Memory, Disk, etc...)

Figure out the bottlenecks and what may be causing them.

May just needed some software and driver updates to improve the performance. Or a configuration tweak or two.

First watch, learn, take notes. Research (google) what you find and look for fixes.

Avoid downloading any software that claims it will fix any given problem. Most of those products will pop up no matter what the problem may be.

As always be sure all her data is backed up and safely copied to another device. Verify the copies.

Change only one thing at a time and keep notes. You may have to "undo" something that did not work out.



 
Solution