From the control pannel, open System.
Sellect the Material tab.
Click the "Periferal manager" button.
In the new window that open, do you have ANY item that is devloped?
Do you have ANY item whose icon have a yellow exclamation point or red X mark?
The X marks are for devices that have been disabled for any reason. It don't means that there is any problem!
If not, then ALL your drivers are present and fully functionnal.
Double click on an item that have an "!".
Sellect the Driver tab.
Click the "Update driver..." or "Install driver..." button and follow the instructions.
You can also go on the web site of the maker of your periferals, download their latest drivers and install them yourself.
Peccavi is right, those naughty will pretend to detect some missing drivers, offer you to correct the situation, and install some virus, spyware or other malewares. EXTREMELY nasty!
That's it for your drivers.
Now for the slowdown.
Do a cleanup of your system:
Empty the trash.
Clear your temporary files and internet cache.
Start a defragmentation of your drive(s).
LET IT FINISH!
It can take many hours if you never done it. Let it work over night if needed.
Set a programmed task to have it defrag your disks at least once a week.
If you have only one drive, it may be usefull to disable the page file, disable hybernation and reboot before you do the defragmentation. It will free some space, and that will greatly help the defragmentation process. It can also considerably slow down your system.
Once the defragmentation is completed, recreate your page file. If needed or wanted, re-enable hybernation.
Fragmented files can have a huge effect in slowing down your system.
A fragmented page file is horible for slowing you down.
Get a good antivirus, install it and do a full scan.
If you have the Norton antivirus, get rid of it as it's about the worst offender when it comes to system slowdown. It agressively scan each and every files every time any file is accessed in any way. It also misses many virus that most free AVs will catch and eradicate.
My usual propositions are: AVG Free, Avast and Microsoft Security Essential. All are FREE!
Download and install CCleaner. It effeciently clean up your system from a LOT of junk!
It can also help correcting registry errors.
Download and install Spybot Search & Destroy. Run it periodicaly. About once every month or two is usualy enough.
If you have more than one drive, move the page file to the second drive and set it's minimal size to about 1.5 to 2 times the installed RAM. There is normaly no use to set the maximum size to more than 2.5 to 3 time the installed RAM.
This will prevent it's fragmentation AND free some place on your system drive.
If you have 2 or 3 extra drives, split the page file over the various physical drives.
Having a page file distributed across multiple drives makes it's access more effecient.
Make sure that this drive is fully defragmented BEFORE you move the page file there.
Idealy, you should create a small partition that will contain nothing else than the page file. It should be the first partition created on that drive, so it's beter to do that on a newly installed drive.
Electro, April 2011
