Does anyone know of a readily available program that will thoroughly check a computer for problems. Both my daughter's and wife's computers are very slow loading programs and I would like to run a complete diagnostic on them before resorting to a clean install of Windows 7. I have already run a deep scan with both Avira and Malwarebytes, as well as running tdsskiller. Both computers came up clean. jetjock
Absolutely no need to defrag you hard drive every day, that is just ridiculous. Maybe once a month or every few months but everyday? why would you give someone advice like that The problem is that the registry needs to be cleaned and defragged. CCleaner can perform the cleaning, it does a pretty good job of it. If you are going to defrag your registry I would recommend Auslogics Registry Defrag (Google it, my post count does not allow the posting of links and I'm much to lazy to post a link long hand) If you have never defragged your Hard drive(s) it would be a good idea to do so ....... every day ...... not so good. While defragging you hard drive it would be a good idea to turn off everything you can like your screen saver, hibernation mode and change your power saving settings to "never" so not to let the system(s) go to sleep, all of the previously mentioned will interfere with the defrag process causing errors or incompletion of the process.
Thanks for the follow-up. I had totally ignored that defrag suggestion. Most folks nowadays think defragging is a waste of time in trying to improve performance. Also, I have been keeping her machine clean with Glary Utilities, so I don't think the registry is the problem either. Kind of looks like a clean install might be needed to correct whatever problems Glary is missing. Might also try CCleaner as that one seems to be the most recommended cleaner utility. Right now I'm backing it up before doing anything else! jetjock.
Just open up task manager and see if any apps are bottlenecking or hogging your resources. Ccleaner and a defragment never hurt either. Wife and kids + PC usually = malware and unnecessary toolbar addons.
Not that it is the same situation but I was having trouble with Windows 8 booting slow and not being able to get into Safe Mode (even though I have a safe mode selection on my boot screen). I had tried all the diagnostics utilities I could find that appeared safe, none did much except for this one: www . tweaking . com - Windows Repair AIO The owner Shane appears very knowledgable about tech things. 2cents.
In my experience, if free of viruses, failing HDD can considerably slow the Pc down. HDD Regenerator is great soft for that problem. Clean OS install at least once a year. Did You check Temperatures?
If they are Dell try the automated scan it will do most hardware check without you havving to manually run the scans. If it is a software related issue you will most certainly find an indication of it by going into the event viewer and spending some time going thorugh the messages. As your description is a little bit vague I am afraid Ican't venture something more solid in the way of help.
Cleaning registry is the biggest Myth on the internet Doing it always,,,, ALWAYS eventually causes more harm than good. No doubt you have heard of the people who have to reformat their systems on a monthly basis, well,,,they are usually the Registry cleaner Fan boys. I should know I used to be one of them. But then I stopped cleaning the registry & instantly the monthly (sometimes weekly) formatting stopped too. Simple fact is that the registry is meant to grow & expand. The relatively small amount of useless entries that get left behind are almost always ignored by windows anyway.. If you must clean the registry then try to find out exactly what entry causing the registry glitch first,, & work on one entry at a time. If that doesn't fix it then restore that entry back to the registry & move on until you locate the exact problem. Your just playing Russian Roulette if you put your faith in a reg cleaner program to take over & delete hundreds of entries in one go to try & solve the problem. You may strike it lucky & have the program find & delete the offending entry from the registry but I guarantee that it will also delete hundreds of entries that shouldn't be removed.
Very good program for PC maintenance - Wise Care 365 Or you can use a separate program to clean and fix errors in the system that are part of Wise Care: Wise Disk Cleaner and Wise registry Cleaner. They are absolutely free, updated regularly. Provide a very significant increase in system performance.