Ulverston Repair Cafe, March 2024

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planted: 13/03/2024last tended: 13/03/2024

Ulverston Repair Cafe.

Second month back after being away for a few.

Looked at a couple of slow laptops.

1. Laptop 1

A Dell Vostro. A bit of a long-term project for one of the other volunteers - today just backing up important files, which took about 2 hours running in the background.

2. Laptop 2

An Asus running Windows 10.

2.1. Reported issue

  • Reported as had been slowing down for a while.
  • But had recently started really creaking.

2.2. Work carried out

  • At startup, Teams reports not having enough free space.
  • This message also appeared at startup "instruction at … referenced memory at xxxx. The required data was not placed into memory because of an I/O error status of xxx Click on OK to to terminate the program".
  • First thing, based off the messages, looked at available drive space.
    • Windows Explorer -> right-click C: -> Properties.
    • There was only 9Mb available.
    • Full drive space only 60Gb.
  • Have a look for where the space is being used up.
  • Mostly apps and features. A few Gb on temporary files (mostly downloads folder). User documents only about 5Gb.
  • Temporary files -> Cleared temporary files.
  • Apps & features -> Uninstalled a few apps. (3 of which were different virus checkers.)
  • After this, had 9Gb free.
  • Installed AVG Free. (You have to pay for Windows Defender now? Oh - the free version is actually called Windows Security on Windows 10. Stay protected with Windows Security - Microsoft Support).
  • Turned off some apps starting at startup.
  • Restarted.
    • Was forced to install some Windows updates which was annoying and wasted some time.
  • Much faster at startup!
  • Still not the speediest machine. Said that installing more memory and an SSD could possibly help, but that they were not easy to access.
  • Wrote down instructions for checking space and removing unneeded files, and how to check startup apps periodically. Advised to run AVG scan regularly.

3. Elsewhere

3.1. In my garden

Notes that link to this note (AKA backlinks).

3.3. Mentions

Recent changes. Source. Peer Production License.