acer laptop extremely slow

utajoker · 27 Jan 2009 at 10:18

my gfs mums laptop has started running extremely slowly, taking 30 mins before it is useable.

its an acer, just over a year old, not sure of the full model name running vista home premium 32bit.

basicaly what happens is you turn it on windows loads, click your login then it starts to load vista normal, then after maybe 30 seconds everything stops. can still use the mouse but clicking anything doesnt work it just does the loading pointer. after leaving it for about 30 mins everything starts to load but is very slow.

ive ran antivirus and spyware. ive tried a system restore to last month before it had any problems but that does not fix it. ive tried schedualing a defrag but it needs to do that on boot up which doesnt happen because it all freezes up.

i was hoping for a recovery disc but no discs came with the laptop.

is it fixable or it just just a case of formating it?

thanks.

beermonster · 27 Jan 2009 at 10:28

Acer laptops have HD based recovery either alt F11 or just F11 on start up to launch the program if you go into bios you should be able to enable it if this feature is turned off

utajoker · 27 Jan 2009 at 11:13

i cant see it to enable it in bios is there an extra bios menu hidden? i only haveteh main boot and security tabs in the bios

beermonster · 27 Jan 2009 at 12:30

Just found this on the support site my bad it was Alt F10

"You can start the Recovery from outside Windows by holding down ALT and F10 on the Acer BIOS splashscreen on power up."

Banzai_Joe · 27 Jan 2009 at 12:35

lol, Acer's suck balls!
It does makes you wonder though. My gf has an acer and i have had to bin 3 acer laptops at work cos they just 'slowdown' after so long even after reformatting they're dog slow. Maybe they have substandard parts in them and after a year or so they start to fizzle out.
Its definitely noticeable with the Acers we've had above any other make of lappy i buy for work.

beermonster · 27 Jan 2009 at 13:11

Other than the mainboards nearly every part in a laptop is off the shelf, i've often seen manufacturers have hundreds of laptops fail due to either bad batch of batteries, HD or incorrectly made GPU's the whole one manufacturer is poor compared to another is usually down to an issue getting out on the internet. Its like any other electrical device really pot luck as to when it breaks.

utajoker · 29 Jan 2009 at 07:27

just got round to this last nite and it worked great, thanks

philjohn · 29 Jan 2009 at 10:11

It could also be a buildup of dust in the fans causing it to overheat and thus throttle the processor. The thermal tolerances in laptops is pretty razor thin - and this is one of the reasons you should never use them on soft surfaces.