What would cause a computer out of the box to be slow?

[draggar]

A friend of ours got a new (refurbished) PC and it is extremely slow.

The PC itself is slow and I'm sure that could also be why the internet browsing is extremely slow.

Thoughts?

RAM?
Crappy PC (I think it is an Acer PC)?
Windows Vista (I tried to find a "classic" or XP view but couldn't - but I did set the theme to be less graphics intensive)
Bad Mobo?

Anyway someone not too educated with PCs could test these (free download-able diagnostics tools, maybe?)

[Der Cute]

Could be an imbalance between hardware specs and OS/ Software specs:
aka putting Vista on a P4 with 1 G of ram.
Pentium 4 = 2.8ghz processing power, hyperthreading, but SINGLE CORE.
1 G ram - depending on the motherboard speeds/specs, may not be fast enough to respond to the CPU's needs.

Could be background software/bloatware running. Check Task Manager (right click on tool bar, task manager, Processes tab, sort by CPU column (click on CPU text at top) or sort by Mem Usage (same). What's the busiest? Right after startup?

Could be trojan infection - especially if the internet/network is busy- SOMETHING'S talking and you need to find out what.

How new is this machine? Physical age wise - should be a mfg date on it sticker on back? When did the person get it in their hands?
What are the physical specs of the machine? Right click on My Computer, Properties, select General Tab (I think...vista is different than xp)....but the hardware specs are listed about the computer.

Post the info out here for us.

No on the cheep tools, this sounds to me (due to being refurbished, and Acer, and Vista) a possible hardware/software conflict or the trojan. Post info here please.

Cutenoob

[Geek King]

One quick thing to look at: Did the computer come with a bunch of pre-loaded programs and trial software? You may want to delete some of that, or at least stop it from running on startup.

[Dreamstalker]

I would second the trialware. My Vista laptop was dog-slow out of the box for just that reason. There are also tweaks you can do to optimize things.

The few new Vista boxen I've dealt with actually needed more RAM right off as they shipped with the absolute minimum required (it would run, but the OS wasn't happy).

[bsaana]

Call me picky, but these days I wouldn't run even XP on less than 2gb of ram. I ran Vista pretty damned well on a P4 3.06 with HT 2gb of ram, and a radeon 9600 with 256mb of video ram - I even had all the Aero features turned on.

I'd check the amount of RAM, see if it has a cheapo processor (celeron or sempron), and definitely check to see what is starting up with the PC.

[draggar]

Could be an imbalance between hardware specs and OS/ Software specs:
aka putting Vista on a P4 with 1 G of ram.
Pentium 4 = 2.8ghz processing power, hyperthreading, but SINGLE CORE.
1 G ram - depending on the motherboard speeds/specs, may not be fast enough to respond to the CPU's needs.

Acer Aspire:
AMD Athlon X2 4050e 2.1GHz processor (meh - this could be what is choking the new system)
3GB of DDR2-667
Integrated video - she's not a gamer so it shouldn't be choking her system.

Could be background software/bloatware running. Check Task Manager (right click on tool bar, task manager, Processes tab, sort by CPU column (click on CPU text at top) or sort by Mem Usage (same). What's the busiest? Right after startup?

I cleaned out a lot on msconfig when I was there but it was still slow.

Could be trojan infection - especially if the internet/network is busy- SOMETHING'S talking and you need to find out what.

I'll have her do a housecall on both PCs. Sadly, she just renewed McCrappy. Some people think AVG is past it's prime - who is good now for the newer PC? I can have her uninstall McCrapy and install the new one.

How new is this machine? Physical age wise - should be a mfg date on it sticker on back? When did the person get it in their hands?
What are the physical specs of the machine? Right click on My Computer, Properties, select General Tab (I think...vista is different than xp)....but the hardware specs are listed about the computer.

She got it two weeks ago and I installed it for her on Friday, that's the first time it's being run since she got it.

No on the cheep tools, this sounds to me (due to being refurbished, and Acer, and Vista) a possible hardware/software conflict or the trojan. Post info here please.

I wonder if a Del diagnostics disc will be able to run on the Acer? I don't see why not, right?

One quick thing to look at: Did the computer come with a bunch of pre-loaded programs and trial software? You may want to delete some of that, or at least stop it from running on startup.

I didn't see too much and I killed anything that she didn't need in msconfig.

[lordlundar]

Could be vista itself. Even with the graphic change, it has a tendency to eat up resources.

[Eric the Grey]

It could also be indexing which Vista does to speed up searches. By default the entire system is indexed. You can turn this off if it causes the system to slow down too much for you. I had to do this because it liked to index while I was playing WoW...

Here's a link to the instructions.



Eric the Grey

[Andara Bledin]

Ugh, indexing. That'll eat up all sorts of resources all the time if you let it.

^-.-^

[draggar]

I turned off indexing and it didn't help. I'll need to bring a diagnostics disc to her to see if there is a bad component - bad RAM etc..

[draggar]

I'm at that computer now and in safe mode (with networking) it seems to run at a normal pace so it is something being loaded up. Time for trial and eror - first to go - McCrappy.

Edit:

I went into the msconfig and took out a lot of crap that Acer put on the PC (file managers, etc..) and rebooted.

WOW this thing is a lot faster now!

[Eric the Grey]

Edit:

I went into the msconfig and took out a lot of crap that Acer put on the PC (file managers, etc..) and rebooted.

WOW this thing is a lot faster now!

Heh, go figure. That's usually the FIRST thing I do with a new pre-built computer, after actually uninstalling the crap I don't want.



Eric the Grey