Expert: James Filmer - 7/29/2010

Question
QUESTION: I have this great laptop i've gotten froma  friend, an HP G-60 laptop, in great condtition. the only issue was a very awkward keyboard where if i press "a", 4 other buttons were entered. i basically solved this by using an external keyboard. a little over a month ago, most of the games i played began to get extremely laggy, and sometimes just messed up. i then found out that whenever it happened, my CPU was shot straight to 100%. i can't really figure ouyt what background program is causing it, but it's been getting worse along the way, especially saying that everytime i log in, my windows defender is off. although the laptop has a restore drive, i want to refrain from using it because when my friend had given it to me, it had all the latest programs on it (microsoft word and powerpoint, adobe programs...), so i want to know if there's any way i can get it running like before.

ANSWER: Hello Fabian,

A. Please provide the following info: System, Firewall, anti-virus, and any other anti-spyware applications besides Windows Defender. Do you play your games within your browser? If so, which one. When surfing, which browser do you normally use? Can you list the names of the games on your system and which ones that cause your CPU to shoot up?

B. Before or after providing the above info - download, install, update and run a Spybot Search and Destroy scan, remove threats and reboot. Also, download and install one of the following - Malwarebytes, SuperAntispyware (they have free personal editions), Emsisoft Anti-Malware, or Lavasoft Ad-Aware (free trial editions), update, scan, remove threats, reboot. Links to all are on http://Enrgy21.com/support




---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: oh, sorry i left out so much...It's windows vista ultimate, and runs a regular windows firewall. i use AVG antivirus, but i haven't uninstalled norton yet. some games i play with my IE 8 like small java and flash games. there's only one browser game i play that requires more, and that's fallen empire: Legions, on Instantaction.com, but that site was put under maintanence some time ago. all the other games i play are downloaded, but never caused a problem before. (Perfect world international, Soldat, S4 league, and trackmania). it's just that now the spikes are no longer spikes. they last around 30 seconds to a full minute at a time and really screw up my gameplay to the point of a total system freeze. only S4 and Perfect World raise the CPU by a certain percent, but that's not what's messing the system up i think. even outside general gaming, my windows media player's visualizations run crappy as well. I'm getting around to running the spybot now.

Answer
(Update: Is your computer performing better now that you removed Norton (if you did? I believe was conflicting with other applications like AVG, but I'd like to continue to help if that wasn't the problem).

Uninstall Norton and reboot: http://bit.ly/cgeK2L and make sure you install one of the other anti-spyware programs (update, scan, remove what it finds) in addition to Spybot.

Have you conducted a Disk Cleanup lately? If not, do this also: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Delete-files-using-Disk-Cleanup

Even though the info you've provided is a good start, it could be something else. I'm just hoping further analysis won't be necessary.

Though it's not likely to make a big difference right now, you should also use a third party cleaner like CCleaner.com (see Enrgy21.com/tools). Gizmo's Techsupportalert (link also on the page) provides some additional choices (free, safe cleaners).