Acer Aspire 5536 Help.

[Ezkaton]

Now I've been talking to a few people about this, and have done several things, so here's the story of the laptop and I'm wondering if anyone can help. I'm not a computer guy so please please please use dumb person talk after you do jargon talk for me <3:

 

 

Basically I wanted a good laptop for University before I was starting my first year in September of 2009. So my Grandad paid for an Acer Aspire 5536, a seemingly medium range, reasonable laptop.

 

The Specs:

AMD Turion X2 technology RM 74 (2.2GHz)

ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics Up to 1408 MB HyperMemory

15.6" HD LED LCD

4 GB Memory

500 GB HDD

 

^ Seems pretty sweet right?

 

So when I first had it I did the usual things I do:

Install Norton as everyone says that's the best. Get FireFox as everyone says that's the best. Get iTunes because that's the best for music. MSN. Modzilla Thunderbird, Skype and Spotify.

 

Recently I've downloaded Minecraft and the RS client, but those are the only things I have downloaded.

 

 

 

Now the problem is thus:

 

After I downloaded everything I wanted I started playing RS etc and the autoset up put it in HD fullscreen etc and it was amazing. This lasted for only 3 months before my laptop was beset with problems and before admitting it was my laptops fault I got the techs at uni to check the sockets etc but alas it was my lappy...

 

Now the thing lagged like absolute hell trying to play Rune, it couldn't even multitask, opening FireFox with iTunes open seemed a task and a half whereas in the first few months it'd do it at a click.

 

So a friend sent off my application for my free windows 7 upgrade and apparently Vista didn't work well and was making me lag due to a Service Pack getting stuck in the updates and not being able to execute it (which is the problem the tech people everywhere put it down to).

 

So I backed up everything and restored it and installed Windows 7. A week later I still had the same problems. A hallmate of mine who lived on my corridor was very computer savvy and downloaded CCleaner and Spybot for me and did all that stuff fixing my registry and scanning for spyware. Still nothing worked.

 

So I persevered with a laptop that lagged like no tomorrow.

 

 

August came and enough was enough I wanted it fixed. So I sent it off to the TechGuys and it came back and worked brilliantly again....

 

UNTIL you guessed it, 3 months down the line it lagged again. So I've rebooted it etc, everything like last time, Spybot, CCleaner, constant virus scans. NOTHING.

 

 

Now a friend put me onto an app called CoreTemp and I used it today and the laptop was averaging 85-110oC (threshold is apparently 100oC) even with all fans being clear (I have it raised etc).

 

 

Now am I right in thinking that the processors on it are totally [bleep]ed and that I should get a new laptop (been looking at a Dell Studio like my best friend has tbh), I just really can't figure what the hell is wrong with this thing apart from overheating.

 

But I honestly can't be bothered sending it off in summer time again for a month for it to come back and work for all of 3 months. I need this for Dissertation work.

 

 

So please please please please please can someone answer my prayers and tell me why my laptop just seems so [bleep]ed? It's really depressing me as I now have a netbook and generally just play RS on my laptop (lagging around in Safe Mode) and browse the web on my netbook :/

[D. V. Devnull]

Alright, first generic question for you... Have you got all the dust out of your laptop? If it's overheating, it will slow down to prevent a total burnout.

 

~D. V. "Dust... the bane of computers anywhere..." Devnull

[cheeky16]

Ya, almost everyone that knows anything about computers thinks Norton sucks. It takes up too much of your processor power. Kaspersky is one of the best. Couple years ago I did some research and chose BitDefender because it was a little cheaper. I've been very happy with it and won't likely change anytime soon. First off just try removing Norton and see how it runs.

 

Another note, I don't recommend Dell computers either. Hopefully it works for you.

[Hawks]

Depends on which Norton you get. The 2011 version is actually decent now.

 

EDIT: I concur with 'don't buy a Dell'.

 

CCleaner - run it.

 

Leave your laptop on overnight, Win7 will defrag and clean itself up pretty well. This might just fix your problem.

Do as Dark Slayer said and check the start up programs.

Run Spybot/Malwarebytes and do a whole virus scan.

 

Update Firefox if it's not updated, it can eat RAM. I feel like iTunes can do this too, so update it as well.

 

Lastly go through all your stuff and delete anything you don't need; this probably won't help speed that much but it's a good idea anyway.

 

Buy a can of air and check with your computer friend to get the dust out of the interior; again might not help much but worth doing.

 

Check task manager for what's running in the background; if there's weird stuff, google it and find out what it is and if you need it; if you don't, find out how to stop it from running.

 

For kicks get the RAM/CPU usage widget for your desktop and watch it, see what you're doing when your RAM is being eaten. It might just be a particular program that's causing issues.

[jasignhagj]

Ya, almost everyone that knows anything about computers thinks Norton sucks. It takes up too much of your processor power. Kaspersky is one of the best. Couple years ago I did some research and chose BitDefender because it was a little cheaper. I've been very happy with it and won't likely change anytime soon. First off just try removing Norton and see how it runs.

 

Another note, I don't recommend Dell computers either. Hopefully it works for you.

 

Lol paying for Antivirus. Microsoft Security Essentials is just as good, and completely free.

[Guy]

If your laptop is under heavy usage the problem (or one of the problems) could be disk fragmentation. A step up from what hawkxs reccomended - the default windows defragger - get a third party one from www.download.com . iObit or Auslogics do good ones - and they're essentially identical. 80-110oC is massively massively massively high - take that laptop apart and nuke it with compressed air. You could consider taking off any CPU heatsink and reapplying thermal paste, too.

 

Edit: Oh, and this:

Lol paying for Antivirus. Microsoft Security Essentials is just as good, and completely free.

[Lord Diddy]

If its possible reinstall windows 7 and then check your temperatures at start, run a program called *Prime95* while checking temperatures and see if the heatsink and fan on the processor are doing its job. Doing a fresh install give you a clear indication of a hardware or software problem. To me it looks like a software problems seeing as from your story that you had it working perfectly, then after some weeks/months of use you received the problem over and over.

 

Also when using your computer make sure it had sufficient airflow from the bottom, using it on a bed/carpet or on your lap is a no-no. There's also a lot of great general advice about computer maintenance in the posts above.

 

*Prime95 is a program that stresses your computers processor and ram to their highest levels, this maxes out the laptops temperatures. This is beneficial because if you run the program and let the temperatures rise, after you stop the test then you will be able to see how well your fans ability to cool down your computer are along with its ability to cool the computer under stress.*

"On an absolutely stable system, Prime95 would run indefinitely. If an error occurs, at which point the stress test would terminate, this would indicate that the system may be unstable. "

[Hawks]

Defraggler is made by the same people as CCleaner and it defrags hard drives nicely.