There are many reasons that can cause Laptops to slowdown, which often seem more susceptible to slow performance than their more bulky desktop cousins. The biggest problem laptop users face is the amount of processing power required to keep everything running smoothly. For example, unlike the PC that sits on a desk which is only connected to a monitor, the laptop has to integrate the display into to processing equation and so forth.
The real question to answer is what has changed on your laptop since when you took it out of the box and it ran perfectly, to the problems you are having now ?
The most common answer is actually found in something built into the all Windows operating systems since Windows 95 and is called a Registry which is the part of your computer which contains all of the data for the various operations Windows performs.
When your laptop computer came from the factory with it's default settings, it was been optimized to run properly with the software that was installed on it. Over time, as you have added files and software - and just as importantly, removed files and software, not to mention downloaded music, and tweaked various settings - your computer gets farther and farther away from those optimal factory settings. To put this in perspective, it would be like adding parts to your car, and then removing some other parts and then adding more parts after that. Finally, your car starts to stall at lights and won't start half the time ( sounds like many older computers doesn't it )
The one area where laptops are not like cars is that their moving parts to not cause poor performance. Instead, the most likely cause of your slowly operating laptop is that your previously discussed registry has in fact become corrupt and your system is essentially running in circles with its internal processing.
The most common symptoms of a laptop experiencing registry problems are as follows.
Extremely slow internet issues including pages taking a long time to load, or files taking a long time to download.
It takes a really long time for your laptop to boot up when you first turn it on.
Programs and websites that used to work fine now keep malfunctioning.
You have started to receive a lot of error messages
Your laptop crashes with no real reason.
Programs stop responding
Your computer laptop freezes and has to be manually rebooted.
To determine if your system is in fact running slow because of problems in your registry, you will need to run a self diagnostic program such as Registry Patrol. This easy to use program will perform a free deep scan on your laptop and will report back on any issues or problems it finds for you at no charge - which means you can figure out what is wrong without having to buy anything in advance or pay a technician to essentially perform the same function.
Programs such as Registry Patrol work by scanning all of your files and hard drives and then creates a cue report of any problems if finds. It's not uncommon to find out that your computer has literally hundreds of irregular settings and errors.
On a side note, a while ago I was over at my mother's house and was trying to find the local movie listings on the web using her laptop running Windows XP, which was on a system that was only a few years old. I punch in the address and I wait, and I wait, to the point of being ridiculous. I then tried to load a Word and it again took literally 5 minutes to load. I then installed Registry Patrol, ran the scan, and then used the self repair feature built into the software. The performance was like night and day, and the laptop ran like new.
By the way, the main advantage of using a registry repair program is it will instantly fix the majority of the problems that are slowing down your laptop quickly and safely - and is a whole lot cheaper than having a technician look at your computer. It also has a feature that allows you to stop programs from loading when you turn on your laptop which is often a problem for older systems with too many start up applications trying to get started every time you boot your machine up. In addition, Registry Patrol will also clean what is called your cache files which will dramatically speed up your internet performance.
For those of you running the Windows XP system on your laptop, you might also want to consider the XP Medic program which offers several more advanced features than the Registry Patrol application, including the ability to completely optimize your entire XP operating system but be warned, is a much more technical program that is allows the user a lot of room to make to many performance tweaks to their computers which can cause problems.
Registry Patrol and XP Medic are both free to install and operate and will likely solve many of the slow processing problems your computer may be experiencing.
