Laptop running super slow- advice?

[azasadny]

I'm voting on failing hard drive....

[89911]

My son is my 14 yo IT guy and he is in charge of fixing the 4 laptops floating around our house. Windows XP is a pretty solid platform and is easy to reload the operating system. I think it is running out of support unless you have service pack two or higher. XP was the last OS that doesn't need a key-code to reload, or more specifically one that only has a single use. If you can get what you need off your computer and clean installl the OS, you would be amazed on how it runs better. Sometimes you can only get so far by trying to fix the OS and it just remains buggy and slow. My son actually has had good luck in upgrading some really old laptops to Windows 7. The disk that came with the computer should be a start. Go on line and search "clean install windows XP" and you will find plenty of material.

[jtfreels]

Is it a Dell? Some are bad about the fan clogging and the CPU will over heat, had it happen to me.

Jay

[Steve Carlton]

It's a Chem Book, probably 7 years old. Been very reliable until now, even has the original battery. It's my backup computer and naturally fails while my Toshiba is in the shop.

[UconnTim97]

Wow, my old Dell laptop has been getting slower and slower lately, thanks to the info here I will be cleaning out the fan tomorrow.

Thanks.

[Steve Carlton]

I downloaded Windows Defender because I heard it was good, thinking there might be some sort of virus. For some reason the Symantec process isn't showing up in the Task Manager after I ended the process and re-booted. (I was unable to uninstall it). For some reason I can't check for updates on Windows Defender. I think this has to do with the Symantec being there. When I run a scan with whatever 2006 definitions are on the program, the CPU usage drops to almost zero for a while before it goes back up. I wish I knew what I was doing...