Compaq Presario problems.

petersmart

petersmart

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Can anyone nelp?

My Brother-in-law has brought round his Comppaq Laptop (Presario F500) with a problem.

After he installed 3 recent updates from Microsoft his laptop has started running VERY slow.

It has also chnaged a lot of his previous settings (wallpaper) etc and changed his user account.

He and I have tried to uninstall the updates but nothing happens.

Any suggestions?

I have created 2 recovery discs from the computer (which took almost 2 HOURS!) but the instructions say that using them would return everything to the factory settings.

He has a copy (genuine) of XP Pro which he prefers. but again installing that would lose all his settings.

I have backed up all the important data on his computer, and am prepared to do a complete HD wipe and re-install but if anyone can suggest how to get the computer running fast again without all that we'd BOTH be very grateful.

He has Norton running and I have used System Mechanic but nothing seems to help.
 
Norton is a fairly intensive program - uses a lot of system resources in BG.
My first port of call would be to download Spybot or Adaware and scan the whole computer for Adware.
After that if it is still running slowly, ctrl-alt-del and list your processes by mem usage/CPU useage and post here what is the top three.
Good luck!
 
I'd start by running a scan with Malwarebytes (www.malwarebytes.org) it's probably the best free tool out there right now for detecting nasties.
 
I've already done all the checks, the point is this problem seems to have started with the installation of the Microsoft updates.

Until that point the laptop had been running fine.

I've shut down Norton but nothing changes - still ultra slow.
 
the only recent updates ive been aware of are related to IE7 security patches.. cant see why that'd cause slowness..

presumable it hasnt tipped the machine under 10% free disk space or something silly like that?
 
sometimes the easiest is the last option to work, have you tried system restore...? go back at least a week.
 
neil_g said:
are you sure theres nothing nasty on there, i still dont see why an update would do that.
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Well I've checked for all the nasties I can, Norton is running continuously and reports nothing and System Mecanic says everything is good.

Have done Memory checks, HD defrag etc - nothing makes a difference.

Laptop seems to be running as cool as expected, so can't see what the prob is.
 
petersmart said:
The update also reset system restore to its original start date - no restore points left.
Click to expand...

Sorry but updates don't do that - they SET restore points not remove them. My money would be on some form of malware infection. A clean install may be your best solution.
 
your not local to Nottingham are you..??
 
LemmingLover said:
Sorry but updates don't do that - they SET restore points not remove them. My money would be on some form of malware infection. A clean install may be your best solution.
Click to expand...

I came to the same conclusion - have started Vista recovery using the recovery data on the HD (partition D)

Windows partition is being re-formatted and Vista re-installed.

Hopefully that should do it unless it's a physical problem with the laptop.
 
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