why is my laptop slow?

run msconfig and uncheck all the unwanted applications from the startup.
disk cleanup

Disk access time is a real problem with laptops. I think the source of your problem is the time delay that it takes the hard drive to spin up after it has "gone to sleep" to save power.

You should check your power saving options in Windows to keep the drive running longer. This will have the negative effect of draining your battery faster, but if you use it plugged in most of the time this won't be a problem.

M@

I think it may be something to do with the mobile processor that is built into laptops, I have an acer aspire 1350 with Athlon-M 2600+ processor. When I go into the system in control panel, it says that my processor is only 412mhz, but when I go onto it when I am doing something complicated, it hs gone up loads. I think that to save power, it turns the speed down, until it is needed (like when you aqre using VBA). When you do something simple like open a file, it does it at the slow speed because it sees no need to do waste power and do it fast. I don't think there is a way of turning this off as it is built into the Mobile processor.

Yeah, the two main issues are your hard drive speed and the adjustable processor speed. Your laptop should have its own power management panel that allows you to select what gets powered down and what speed your processor should run at when using a battery. If the panel isn't very customizable you might try some software like this:
http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/

There you go then, perfunction has what you need to up the processor speed. I cant see your problem accessing files being slow due to the hard drive cos if it has a 5200rpm drive (cos its new it should) it should easily be fast enough to open a file. My new desktop only came with a 5200rpm drive and it loads stuff really fast.

Remember, if you do speed up the processor, it will use a lot more battery power, so consider if its worth loading a file 1/2 a second faster or having 1hr more battery power. If you were just wondering if your laptop had something wrong with it, the answer is no.

I think this is not necessarily a HD or processor speed issue. If the wait for the Start menu is indeed in the seconds range this must be something else. My 233 MHx P II reacts instantly and I have a problem believing a modern processor is slower than a P II, even if it is in "relaxed" mode...

What O/S is this?
How many processes are running? Which ones?
/RID

I don't think it is the drive speed so much as the spin up time.

M@

yeah, it could be the spin up time, but the hd wont switch off everytime he has opened a program, it will only shut off after a set time (1min+).  If he was to click on the start button then click it again, the second time, it should come up instantly as the HD is running. Try that!!

Cheers for the help everyone

so how can i speed up the processor? Cos' i never use the battery anyway

If i get another 512Ram do you think it will speed things up, the basic operations of the computer

If you're running on AC all the time, I don't think the processor is stepping down, because it thinks you have plenty of power.  You may want to eliminate background tasks and things that take away from available RAM.  Bring up task manager and look at what's taking all the cpu when you experience slowness.  512MB is more than enough for WinXP or Win2K.

Yea, well, my RAM is never being all used anyway, for basic operation, so those this mean that if i get another 512RAM i will not notice a difference?

and if i was to speed up the processor, how would i go about doing this.

I am using winXP Pro

Thanks again

That's right, additional RAM won't help if you aren't making use of all your current memory.  You can't speed up the processor, you can only set the power settings to full, and if you're on AC, this is the default.

did you try this:

http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/

Its suppost to speed your processor up.