Laptop starts randomly loading as if loading a demanding program

haris15

Estimable
Mar 25, 2015
10
0
4,570
Hello

I have an Acer Aspire 5552 laptop. Basically, when I am browsing the internet, or doing anything, randomly the laptop will start loading. Basically, it makes that loading sound as if you are firing up a game and the loading light starts flashing, the laptop also becomes slow around this point. It can last 30 seconds - 1 minute, which makes it very frustrating.

I have ran Malwarebytes and got rid of all threats (which were non malware), and have avast! anti-virus installed. It has been fine all the time until the past month. Whenever I open the task manager, firefox is always taking up most memory when I am using it. So what is the problem?

My specs are:

AMD Athlon II X2 P320 @2.1ghz On Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250
3GB DDR3 Memory
 
Solution
that probably means your Avast is scanning your computer a lot when opening new programs. This type of behavior is typical of many antivirus programs, but it has a big impact on system performance, especially since your HDD can only spin so fast. Personally, I use Bitdefender (both free and paid versions) as my antivirus and it has an imperceptible impact on system performance.

Entomber

Estimable
Apr 21, 2014
96
0
4,610
when this "loading" happens, I suggest you open up Resource Monitor and see what is taking up a large portion of your Disk activity. My bet is that it's your antivirus doing some background scans, which is locking up your computer.
 

haris15

Estimable
Mar 25, 2015
10
0
4,570


Thanks for your reply. I don't really get this stuff but I opened up mozilla firefox, and opened a few other applications and AvastSvc.exe was one of the highest in terms of disk activity.

It had total (B/sec) 199,944 when I opened Mozilla
And had total (B/sec) 545,603 when I opened up MS word

What does this mean? And how can I lower this?
 

Entomber

Estimable
Apr 21, 2014
96
0
4,610
that probably means your Avast is scanning your computer a lot when opening new programs. This type of behavior is typical of many antivirus programs, but it has a big impact on system performance, especially since your HDD can only spin so fast. Personally, I use Bitdefender (both free and paid versions) as my antivirus and it has an imperceptible impact on system performance.
 
Solution

haris15

Estimable
Mar 25, 2015
10
0
4,570
Hello again.

I did uninstall avast! but the problem still persists. Any ideas on what it could be? On resource monitor it just comes up with "system" at the top?
 

Entomber

Estimable
Apr 21, 2014
96
0
4,610
if "System" has a high disk usage, and you only have 3GB RAM and no mobile GPU, I would suspect that your computer is locking up because your RAM is fully utilized, and Windows is using the pagefile (using your hard drive like RAM).

 

haris15

Estimable
Mar 25, 2015
10
0
4,570


I do not think this is the case. In fact, for most games 3gb of RAM is plenty. All current games can run at 4gb RAM.

I have 600mb free when running demanding applications, so what would be the issue?
 

Entomber

Estimable
Apr 21, 2014
96
0
4,610
in Resource Monitor, check out the Memory tab, and if there are a large number of so-called "hard faults" this is indicative of your system using the pagefile since the RAM is fully utilized.
 

haris15

Estimable
Mar 25, 2015
10
0
4,570


I will keep an eye on that thanks. But today I did notice for a short time some clicking noises, I would assume they are coming from the hard drive, but nothing continious, it stopped after 30 seconds or so. Could this hard drive be reaching the end of its lifetime?