Over the past few months I've noticed my Asus netbook is getting noticeably slower, particularly the internet.

Have downloaded Chrome to try but that appears slower than IE.

Is there anything particular I can do to investigate potential problems? I'm running Windows 7 Starter on Asus 1005P, 2GB ram, 1.66 GHz, with approx 200 GB drive.

Tis really annoying me and am in danger of throwing it out the window soon!!!!

defrag?

Don't think it needs it - drive is split in 2. Secondary section is empty and other is only 66GB of 99GB used.

Sudden slowdown is often malware. Try running some free scanners like Malware Bytes or ASquared.

Running Windows 7 on that system isn't going to be ideal either. Have you tried Linux?

Running Malware Bytes shortly.........................

Running Windows 7 on that system isn't going to be ideal either. Have you tried Linux?

Appreciate that but to be fair for what I use it for, can't be bothered to go down the Linux route. Work laptop (HP) is fine at home and I can transfer stuff between them.

Malware hs so far detected 12 infected objects

Fair enough! Ubuntu is now so easy to install, and very easy to use. Might be something to consider for the future.

Fair enough! Ubuntu is now so easy to install, and very easy to use. Might be something to consider for the future.

Cheers, appreciate the input. May start a new thread ref Linux/Ubuntu once this is sorted!

Back to Malware - 14 objects detected, have removed them and am re-running

+1 for Ubuntu, although I also appreciate while it's simple to switch, it's quite "difficult" to get going in new territory so to speak.

Also, in the meantime, I would still try a general clean up. Run CCleaner (both clean and registry). Run Auslogics Defrag or Defraggler. Get Defraggler to do a boot time defrag of your pagefile.sys and registry too, that could help.

Otherwise it seems to be a fact of life I'm afraid - as time goes on, computers get slower. Personally I put it down to updates. I had a AMD K6-2 500 that could run vanilla WinXP when it first came out. But I bet if you put WinXP SP3 on it it'd destroy the poor thing...

Got an ASUS 901 here (typing on it now) with 2G Ram running XP and it's still fine after a couple of years... What Anti virus are you running etc. and have you checked things like the system performance settings and that the HDD is OK (my desktop slowed down until it was virtually unusable a while ago all as a rsult of some secctors going bad).

After creating the windows recovery disks I waxed my Asus netbook & installed Linux Mint. Nice & simple & even connects to my vodafone contract no problem. Speed is impressive. Comments from the windows geeks who seen it - '**** thats fast!'. I'd recommend Mint over Ubuntu currently for a Linux noob as it's GUI is closer to what you're used to than default Ubuntu.

I've put Ubuntu on my Ma's Asus laptop as that took an age to boot up & was slow to run (vista) & she only uses email, intenet & word processing. She loves the speed & quickly got used to the different interface.

You can then forget about OS bloating to a standstill, malware, defrags etc

New Anti-Virus software?

It can kill a netbook pretty quick, especially with win7 starter on it.

Use Microsoft Security Essentials and it's all good, even with with 7 starter

Pop Windows XP Pro on it. And if you aren't using much space, pop an SSD in.

New Anti-Virus software?

It can kill a netbook pretty quick, especially with win7 starter on it.

Use Microsoft Security Essentials and it's all good, even with with 7 starter

So you're suggesting I dump the Avast AV and go with MS Security Essentials? Haven't had a problem with Avast to be honest and aslong as MS doesn't use too much resources.

So you're suggesting I dump the Avast AV and go with MS Security Essentials? Haven't had a problem with Avast to be honest and aslong as MS doesn't use too much resources.

Yes.

IME many anti-virus/internet protection software packages use quite a lot of resource (but so did the paid for ones) as they tried to do everything under the sun.

The MS one does the anti-virus bit just fine.

MS security Essentials has been a bit of a mixed bag for me. Works great on the laptop big improvement over Avast.

Totally jiggered my desktop. for some reason it got in a loop scanning something and wouldn't get out. Switched to Panda Cloud on the desktop, so far so good.

I switched from avast and avira a few weeks back and never looked back.

I found avast would cause the system to hault on boot up and avira seemed a bit of a resourse hog.

I have it installed on the desktop, my netbook, other halfs netbook and a tablet pc I have. All run very well and virus free.

Phil

Well I ran a FULL malware scan last night, left it running - 9 hours later....................and it has found 1 infected object.

MS security Essentials has been a bit of a mixed bag for me. Works great on the laptop big improvement over Avast.

Totally jiggered my desktop. for some reason it got in a loop scanning something and wouldn't get out. Switched to Panda Cloud on the desktop, so far so good.

I switched from avast and avira a few weeks back and never looked back.

I found avast would cause the system to hault on boot up and avira seemed a bit of a resourse hog.

I have it installed on the desktop, my netbook, other halfs netbook and a tablet pc I have. All run very well and virus free.

Phil

Going to tidy some files and programs up tonight - I think there is some stuff on there I don't use, then I will uninstall Avast and try out MSE. I need to check the startup stuff also as I think it boots up some stuff which I really don't need.

Thanks for all the help guys, will let you know how I get on.

Also worth checking for any manufacturer programs that are not needed.

I find there are often power management programs etc that just aren't needed.

On my netbook (lenovo idepad S12) it had some lenovo energy management software on. The fan was on all the time and the battery life was terrible. I uninstalled it and just set up the windows power options. Fan now just kicks in when doing heavier stuff and the battery life went up by a huge ammount!

Phil

Use msconfig to stop any unneeded startup programs and services - it can make a world of a difference over a normal crud filled boot.

http://www.netsquirrel.com/msconfig/msconfig_win7.html

I used to work as a tech for PCWorld and that's all we really did for the £50 "healthcheck" as the software never worked properly!

I used to work as a tech for PCWorld ...

Oh dear not another one

MS security Essentials has been a bit of a mixed bag for me. Works great on the laptop big improvement over Avast.

Totally jiggered my desktop. for some reason it got in a loop scanning something and wouldn't get out. Switched to Panda Cloud on the desktop, so far so good.

At one stage I think MSE had a tendency to try and scan itself and get it's knickers in a twist but all that has been sorted now. I dumped AVG and have now installed MSE on three netbooks and two desktops, all running fine with no virus problems.

Well I ran a FULL malware scan last night, left it running - 9 hours later....................and it has found 1 infected object.

What malware scan did you use? On the netbooks I only use MSE but on the desk tops I also have malwarebytes which seems ok if a little slow-ish.

If it is taking 9 hrs for a scan I'd also be checking for a HDD problem rather than malware or a virus.

Malwarebytes is what I used - that was on a FULL scan of everything.

MSE has been installed, have de-installed a few other programmes which I didn't need, reduced the startup list down somewhat (there was some junk in it) and things appear to be improved. IE is much better now, doesn't take as long to load pages.