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Question

My Toshiba Satellite E45-B4200 slow at opening docs

May 3, 2017 8:09PM PDT

My Toshiba Satellite #45-B4200 is 2.5 years old. I believe it runs Windows 8.1.

I'm quite simple, just use it for Internet, iTunes (download many songs), store a few TV shows, a little Photoshop, Google Earth, Spotify, and most importantly Microsoft Office.

Recently, loading of Microsoft Office (or simply opening any document) has been incredibly slow. To search 'My Documents' can take from 1-20 minutes simply for the folder to open. And once it opens, it can take up to 5-10 minutes for the document to open. And sometimes I will get a "(Not Responding)" where it just buffers forever and I can't edit it.

I checked my storage space which says "433 GB free of 687 GB" so I don't think storage is slowing it down.

I've been using Google to find ways to try and speed it up but it's all so cluttered and I'm confused. Just looking to answers as to why it takes so long to open a document or browse my documents. It's quite important because I am a teacher and am on Microsoft Office religiously and it pains me to waste so much time waiting just to open a document. It's been a huge problem pulling up worksheets in time.

What could be the problem? Any clear steps to take to improve it?

Also, I don't know life span of laptops, especially this one. Is 2.5 years about time to replace a laptop?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Couple of things
May 3, 2017 8:39PM PDT

Get a can of compressed air and clean the vent ports, do it daily for a week.
Run a pass of chkdsk with the F option on all the drives, use google for the how to.

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Thanks
May 5, 2017 12:06AM PDT

Thanks for the tip. I did the chkdsk and it seems a bit faster, though a bit slow. Will be looking into cleaning the vent ports. Appreciate the help.

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Answer
Actually a well known thing.
May 4, 2017 7:47AM PDT

As the machine ages the drives can slow and fail. Many are replacing HDDs with SSDs to speed it all up and put off buying a new laptop.

Comment. I would have taken the upgrade to W10.

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Thanks
May 5, 2017 12:07AM PDT

Yes, perhaps should have upgraded to W10. Looks like I'm stuck with the current one I suppose.

Interesting topic....I will look it up.

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Answer
Do Some Simple Cleaning
May 4, 2017 11:34PM PDT

Hi there,
here are some simple tips for you to do on your laptop.
1. press "Windows" icon and "R"
enter "PREFETCH"
delete all the files in there.
2. press "Windows" icon and "R"
enter "%temp%"
delete all the files
3. Delete history in your Browsers
4. Delete unnecessary software.


this is a process by which you can delete temporary files created by your computer(non-usable)

Link to support site removed by moderator.

Post was last edited on May 5, 2017 12:37 AM PDT

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Thanks!
May 5, 2017 12:08AM PDT

I will try this, hope it should help!