Thoughts on technology

[eleneariel]

My darling-and-beloved laptop (a Toshiba Satellite) is somewhere between three and four years old. It's served me well and has had no major problems. It's still serving me well, except that in the last couple weeks something has happened to make the svchost.exe file take up 100% of the CPU. It'll do that for ten or fifteen minutes (during which things either run very slowly, or don't run at all), then be fine. Usually it happens just at startup, but sometimes at other random times as well. It's getting annoying, and I'm sick of it.

I ran full scans with Ad-Aware, ewido, and AVG. Ad-Aware found a few things, which I deleted, but the problem is still there.

So, two questions: any other ideas before I take it to the shop?

and

When/if  I take it in Monday to have it professionally scanned and cleaned, shall I tell them to go ahead and put an 80 GB hard drive in it? It only has a 20 GB now, which has been fine, but with all pictures I take some extra room would be great. (side note, because I'm honestly not quite sure...will a larger hard drive just give me more space to store things, or actually make it run faster? Or do I need more RAM, as well? It runs normal things fine, but programs like Photoshop are a little slow sometimes.) Like I said, it is around four years old. I will be needing/wanting a new one sometime in the next few years. Since it has no problems except for the one thing now, I don't see a reason to ditch it for a new one yet, but I don't want to put too much money into it if it'll probably only last another year or so.

Give me imput!

Comments

[pansyprincess.livejournal.com]

A bigger hard drive is never a bad idea! ;) And yes, if you have a good motherboard and processor, more memory will definitely make it run faster. My work computer only had a 40GB hard drive on it before it caught a virus, but it has a 160 GB hard drive now and it runs SO much faster and smoother!

[eattheolives.livejournal.com]

good to know! Thanks, Sarah. =)

[ransomedsea.livejournal.com]

In conjunction with Ad-Aware, I also have CCleaner and Spybot S&D to keep things running well.

I definitely recommend CCleaner. Before I had it, my computer was basically caked in excess files. Try the "Issues" button and it may find whatever problem there is and possibly more (also run the cleaner, though go through each thing to make sure you want to delete those files). It'll ask if you want to back-up with a text file for the issues, but I never do and you really don't have to--simply fix all the issues listed. If you don't feel sure about it, back it up with a text file and if it runs fine, just delete the text file.

If there are issues listed that keep returning (you've fixed them once, but they're always showing up), you may also have to download this dial-something program. I can't remember the name of it now, but I had to download it recently when my computer wasn't allowing for the issues CCleaner found to be modified.

20 GB isn't much at all. Especially with images and image-editing programs, you probably will want more space. I say go for it.

Phew, sorry about being long-winded.

[eattheolives.livejournal.com]

Never apologize for saying much!

I'll try the CCleaner for sure, and SpyBot too.

I know, 20 GB seemed like a lot when I first got it. =)

[jmcphers.livejournal.com]

SVCHOST is the Windows service host. It's responsible for overseeing essential background services and programs. Malware is notorious for installing itself as a "service" and getting Windows to run it through SVCHOST.

My advice is to back up your data, wipe your disk, and reinstall Windows. It's a heck of a lot faster than trying to find the needle in the haystack that's causing your software slowdown. Hardware doesn't get slower as it ages; it just becomes comparatively slower to the increasingly fast new hardware. If you decide your hardware isn't fast enough for your needs, by all means, get new hardware, but if it's software that's causing the slowdown, it's almost always worth it to fix the software end of things.