how can i restore my laptop to its original power

[andreasaspenberg]

i have an acer laptop that was strong when i got it but that have gotten weaker over time. i really want to fix it but i dont know how. please help me.

 

[Dr Super Good]

If you mean that it does not perform as well there are 3 possible causes.

1. Bloat, overtime your OS might become weighed down with software and data making it slow.
2. Inflation, as time progressed programs such as the opperating system itself needed more memory and processor time. Other programs like browsers this is especially the case.
3. Degredation, overtime some pieces of hardware such as mechanical hard disks can wear causing them to perform slower. As far as I am aware this only effects mechanical devices.

1. Can be fixed largly by just cleaning out clutter that is stored on your PC. Defragmenting both data and pagefiles will also help. Ultimate fix is to just reinstall the OS as this sets your system back to the minimum nescescary requirements. Additionally some bloat is generated by the OS itself as many updates are depricated by newer updates.

2. This usually governs when is a good time to buy a new PC. The fact is that a umpteen year old computer just can not run modern programs fast. Overtime even the opperating system itself requires more resources to run. Example being orignal XP against XP SP3 where a whole lot of new programs and features were added which needed more resources. Although you will never get your feeling of perfect responsiveness back, you might be able to boost performance by installing more or larger memory modules (more RAM).

3. Simply getting a new hard disk can fix this problem. This is detected by checking how fast you I/O with partitions on the disc. Be aware that if your hard disk is heavilly fragmented you will also suffer from slow I/O speeds but that is easilly fixable with a disk defragmenter (like the ones that come with windows).

 

[andreasaspenberg]

seems that i didnt provide enough information on the problem. the harddrive is still quite fast(newer than the pc because the original harddrive was faulty.) but graphics are rather slow. it have 4 gigabytes of memory. i cant reinstall the system on my own because of the oem license. it didnt come with extra cds either i believe.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Use tools like task manager and performance monitor and any graphic driver specific monitors to find what is bottleknecking the system.

 

[The Reborn Devil]

If it's an OEM thing, then a reformatting option is most likely installed into the computer. At least it was like that for me (before I uninstalled XP and got Windows 7 (without OEM license). I had no CD's, but at a certain point during startup I had to press a key like F10 I think. For me it said "Press F10 to restore the system" and there was a 5 second countdown next to it. When I then pressed F10 I got some options, like quick reformat or a complete reformat.

 

[BlargHonk]

2. This usually governs when is a good time to buy a new PC. The fact is that a umpteen year old computer just can not run modern programs fast. Overtime even the opperating system itself requires more resources to run. Example being orignal XP against XP SP3 where a whole lot of new programs and features were added which needed more resources. Although you will never get your feeling of perfect responsiveness back, you might be able to boost performance by installing more or larger memory modules (more RAM).

Or you could reformat.