Very slow performance with Vista 32

[frederico roldao]

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-FZ11S, with Vista Home 32. The laptop has a Core 2 Duo
T7100 @1.8GHz and 2Gb RAM. I run Office 2007, Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks,
Corel, etc...
Sometimes the machine becomes so slow I almost fall asleep (literally!)
while waiting for it do perform a simple task such as opening IE or showing a
menu or opening an email message. I should add that my PST has 5.6 Gb. I'd
like to reduce its size, although I don't think it is the cause of the slow
running, but I need to keep many emails... I have talked with Sony and they
simply refuse to let their customers downgrade to Xp. So, besides tweaking
(which I don't know how to), what can I do to my laptop to avoid these
episodes of EXTREMELY slow running?

 

[JW]

How big is your paging file?
Do you have a ready boost flash drive or card installed? If not it acts as
cache memory to your paging file so will reduce delays to do paging.
What is your CPU utilization when running slow?

 

[Richard L. Matthis]

You might try installing CCleaner and running it with the default
scanning/deletion parameters

Richard

 

[frederico roldao]

The paging file is automatically managed and says it has 2345Mb.
No, I have no ready boost flash drive or card.
The CPU goes up to 100% sometimes...

 

[frederico roldao]

thanks, i'll try it.

You might try installing CCleaner and running it with the default
scanning/deletion parameters

Richard

 

[JW]

Does Task Manager/Processes when sorted on the CPU column give a good
indication of what processes are using up all the CPU power?

 

[frederico roldao]

Yes, it does. But when I have those "lag" problems I seldom can access the
Task Manager, I try to open it, it shows on the task bar but I cannot
visualize it and see what's using the CPU. Right now, and after having run
CCleaner and having adjusted the performance options for "best performance"
it is runing smoothly, although not perfectly. It now refuses to open
programs by mouse clicking and I have to do it by finding the program in its
start menu and punching "enter". It'll go away when I reboot but still it is
rather annoying...

 

[Phillips]

Disable unnecessary Apps running in the background - google the issue.
5400rpm hdd wih Vista + other programs on is a show stopper. Possible
culprits: defrag or indexing popping in on "idle," av etc scan, updaters
(acrobat etc) checking back home.
Try disabling one at a time in msconfig/startup.
Michael

 

[frederico roldao]

Thanks, I'll try that too.

Disable unnecessary Apps running in the background - google the issue.
5400rpm hdd wih Vista + other programs on is a show stopper. Possible
culprits: defrag or indexing popping in on "idle," av etc scan, updaters
(acrobat etc) checking back home.
Try disabling one at a time in msconfig/startup.
Michael

 

[Joe Weiss]

Not sure if this will help but I had similar problems when first using a Dell
system wiht Vista Ultimate and Office 2007. Had to find out which Add-Ins
were causing problems and then remove them. Took a bit of time to track them
all down as different ones affected each Office program (Outlook, Word and
Excel).