Question Two Windows-related problems (I think) - please help

Kerr Avon

Junior Member
Feb 24, 2013
9
1
71
Please note: These two problems are with a laptop, but I think the hardware is irrelevant, and they are Windows-related, so I am posting in the Windows forum. If I am wrong, then I apologise, and would a moderator please move this to the laptop forum, thank you.



I have an old laptop, an Acer Aspire E1 Z5WE1 NXMEPEK Laptop E1-570 Intel i5 CPU (8 GB RAM, Windows 10), that until recently was running fine. But sometime in the past few weeks, it's developed two faults, which may be connected to each other, I don't know. These two faults are:


Fault 1 - When I double click on a program, or a game, or a text file on the desktop, etc, then there is a pause of about eight or ten seconds, with the Windows 10 swirling circle swirling around, before the game (or program, or text file, etc) begins to load. After this pause, though the program or game loads as normal and plays at full speed and with no problems. And when I exit the program, or game, etc, then when I double click on a different program, game, etc, then the ten seconds or so of swirling circle reappears, before the laptop starts to load the game/program/etc.

Prior to this fault appearing, a few weeks ago, whenever I double clicked on a game or program, etc, then it would start to load immediately, as it normally should.


Fault 2 - When I use the web browser Brave on the laptop, then after opening say a dozen pages (whether I leave all the pages open, or I close one before opening another) then the web pages stop opening, it's as though the web signal stops getting through. This also happens if I use Firefox instead (I've not tried a third browser on the laptop yet). Every other item in my house that can connect to the web (my desktop PC, my tablet, my game consoles, etc) works fine, it's just the laptop that displays this problem. Again, up until a few weeks back, this problem didn't exist, and I could open new pages without problem. My laptop is wirelessly connected to the router, as are the other things.




The laptop seems to be working fine other than these two problems, Windows 10 is up to date, and the laptop is always plugged in, so it's presumably not a battery related issue. Both Malwarebytes and Avast! antivirus show the laptop as being uninfected, the laptop has two SSD drives (one of which has replaced the DVD drive, via an internal hard drive caddy, months ago, so not related to these problems), and no mechanical drive. I have run

chkdsk C: /F /X

and

SFC /Scannow

and

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

with no errors detected. I don't want to reformat and reinstall everything, because there are many games and programs installed, and other than these two faults, everything seems fine.

Any ideas or suggestions, please?
 

Steltek

Diamond Member
Mar 29, 2001
3,243
999
136
Have you installed any type of monitoring software to check for heat related issues?
 

Kerr Avon

Junior Member
Feb 24, 2013
9
1
71
Thanks for all of the responses.

I *might* have solved both of the problems with the laptop. I had begun uninstalling things that might be slowing the system down, and when I uninstalled Avast! Anti-virus, and rebooted, then everything started to load almost immediately when I double clicked on their icon. Success! So I rebooted, and re-installed Avast!, and the slowdown was back. I uninstalled Avast!, rebooted, and for the last couple of days everything is working fine, including the former second problem of the browser refusing to load more than a few pages.

I can sort of understand how Avast! could perhaps go wrong and start scanning things and so slow down loading (if I doble clicked on three .TXT files in a row, for example, then each one would take say eight or ten seconds to open, even if each .TXT file was only two or three kilobytes in size).

But I can't understand how Avast! could cause a web browser to stop loading after a few pages, though.

Anyway, everything seems fine now, and I am currently using Windows Defender as I don't want to rock the boat until I am sure that the two problems have been fixed - many times I have supposedly fixed a PC related problem, only for it to re-appear again later, so I am suspicious especially of easy fixes such as this one.

What good, free anti-viruses do you recommend, please?


memory issue

I thought so too, but MemTest86 didn't show any faults, so I assumed it was a software caused memory problem. I'm not sure how Avast! could have caused it, though.


Have you installed any type of monitoring software to check for heat related issues?

No, do you recommend any, please?
 

Steltek

Diamond Member
Mar 29, 2001
3,243
999
136
For just checking basic temps, you can use either HWINFO64 or HWMonitor.

Avast has a browser monitoring tool, so it is possible that something could have gone wrong. I used to use Avast years ago, but eventually gave it up for precisely things like this happening.
 

Kerr Avon

Junior Member
Feb 24, 2013
9
1
71
For just checking basic temps, you can use either HWINFO64 or HWMonitor.

Avast has a browser monitoring tool, so it is possible that something could have gone wrong. I used to use Avast years ago, but eventually gave it up for precisely things like this happening.

Yes, Avast! looks like it was the culprit.


Windows Defender is all you need. Multiple AV and Firewall programs have long been known to cause issues such as you experienced and other odd quirks.

Yes, I will stick with Defender, thanks.