Sorry to reply late but I have been off line for a while. One of the reasons that older computers start to run slower is simply to do with the number of updates that we all automatically download from Microsoft. My 2002 laptop takes 5 - 8 minutes to start up whilst the laptop I'm typing on which is 2008 starts automatically in under 45 seconds.
Laptops have settings on them that prevent you from basically messing them about when you are running off the battery. The simplest way to keep your laptop working well is to always run it off the mains, never download updates from Microsoft and under no circumstances ever, ever connect to the internet. So in that case, why on earth would you have a laptop!!! The whole point of a laptop is that you can run it in your car, access the internet wirelessly from inside your car and make sure you have the latest updates to your Microsoft operating system so that you ensure that you don't get hacked etc. So, if you have problems with your laptop going to sleep (hibernating) then you need to go to the start menu, choose help and support and then type in hibernate. This will let you access the settings for sleep etc when you are not running of the mains. Work out how long you tend to need to leave your laptop unattended when not on the mains and add about 10 minutes to be certain. Also, tell it not to turn off when on the mains. This should help your issues there. You can use windows washer to clean your hard drive - fab, use it myself. But if you don't want to buy the soft ware you can do it using two simply processes. Firstly, go to Tools on your web browser, choose internet options and browsing history. From there you can clean our cache, history and cookies etc - these are the things on your pc that tell it where you have been etc and keep small version of the web pages you have visited. Take the option to delete these. If you like not having to type in your passwords all the time DO NOT take the option to delete these. Then when you are bored, and connected to the mains, go to the start menu and choose Help and Support again, enter in defrag and search. This will offer you the option to defragment your pc hard drive. When you delete files, they are like a filing cabinet that is not well stored. Imagine that page one is in file one and page two is in the next drawer and another file. By defragging, you clear out any odd envelopes with no data in them and put all the used data in neat envelopes next to each other. This makes you hard drive work better. Hope this helps yes, you can back up your hard-drive and reformat it and reload your files - I did that once, took me two days to do a 150 gigabyte harddrive. Never done that again in 20 years of computing. L Oh, and £65 was a lot of money but not unusual. Regards Liz Baker -----Original Message----- From: Malvary J Cole <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Chat <[email protected]> CC: Rab and Jacquie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:21 Subject: [lace-chat] Computer question - advice needed When I was in England recently my sister, Jacquie, had problems with her aptop. As we both needed it for our notes for Convention and to check -mails we took it into a local computer shop to find out what was wrong. It urned out to be something simple to do with the timing out when it was on leep. For £65.00, he didn't exactly fix it but did tell us how to short ircuit the problem when it happened again as soon as we got it home. As part of our discussions with him he said that we needed to remove all the oftware off the computer and reload it (did we also need to reformat the ard-drive too?). This should be done every six months. He was willing to do hat for us too, for a price. We declined. As Jacquie is not logged into Lace or Chat on her laptop while living with my ad she asked if I'd write to chat on her behalf to ask if anyone else does t. Is this something that seriously needs to be done or is it a scam he has hought up to make money. She has been pondering on it and thought that hen you remove stuff you still always leave a footprint, so if you are onstantly removing and reloading programmes, there'd surely be loads of extra its floating around which would make the matter worse not better. She has ad the laptop since 2004 so according to him it should have been done 6 or 7 imes by now. She is not aware of it being any slower than it ever was; it seems to hesitate hen the fan comes on/is about to come on, but it always has done that. Your houghts would be most helpful. Thanks Malvary in Ottawa where the snow piles are slowly melting, but it is supposed o be up to 20c by the end of the week To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: nsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________ AOL's new homepage has launched. Take a tour at http://info.aol.co.uk/homepage/ now. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
