Laptop performance issues

[Holly_Hobby]

I have a top of the line Lenovo Think Pad, it's about 6 years old. It's been extremely slow the past few days and getting worse.

I've run an Avast virus scan, an Ad-Aware scan and a Malwarebytes scan, all are clean. All of my software is up to date. Windows checked for software issues, that's clean. I have hard drive temperature software, it's running at about 90 degrees.

I have Window 7 and Firefox. I disabled all of my ad ons. I ran chkdsk, all ok. There's been no changes within the last week or so to anything. Explorer is slow too. My ISP finds no problem.

Any ideas on what to check next? My hard drive light normally flashes when it's working, but it's been lit up solid green the entire time. Thank you.

[hollysmom]

1. I am not an expert, but supposedly the registry can get filled with garbage.

You might try a registry cleaner.

[Holly_Hobby]

5. Thanks...

I run a registry cleaner on a monthly basis. I ran it yesterday and it was clean. I forgot to mention in my post that I ran Crap Cleaner earlier.

[Newest Reality]

2. Try doing a scan

on the hard disk. If you are showing lots of bad blocks, the hard drive might be failing. Sometimes that goes slowly, sometimes not.

If Windows finds a lot of bad blocks, (it will mark them as bad) you may want to back up your data quickly in that case.

[Holly_Hobby]

6. Thanks for the reply...

I ran chkdsk yesterday and it found quite a few errors. I back up my files on a weekly basis.

This laptop has taken a beating over 6 years. Early on, my dog stepped on the keyboard, I had problems with it then, took it in to the shop. They had to disable half of the memory because it was behind the "D" key where my dog stepped on it and damaged it. Honestly, though, I didn't see a reduction in performance. Maybe the other half of the memory is going too?

[TexasTowelie]

3. The easiest thing is to reset Firefox.

It will reset Firefox to its default state. Here are the instructions:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-preferences-fix-problems

[Holly_Hobby]

7. Thank you...

I did that, forgot to mention in my original post. There's never been a software problem that I couldn't solve, so I really think it's hardware. Explorer is slow too.

[hobbit709]

4. Slow on everything or just on browsing?

slow on everything-find out what is loading on startup, clean out any and all TEMP directories(Windows thinks temp means forever)
AT 6 years I would run a CHKDSK on the hard drive-if it's getting bad sectors that really slows it down trying to read the data it needs.
If it's just the browser then clear out the browser history and cookies settings

[Holly_Hobby]

8. Slow nearly on everything...

I'll check out startup and clean out the temp files. I did run chkdsk yesterday, found quite a few errors. I reset Firefox a few days ago. Thanks for your reply.

[hobbit709]

9. If checkdisk is finding errors on a 6 year old drive, it's probably time to replace it.

[Holly_Hobby]

10. Thanks for confirming my suspicions n/t