Restore computer to purchase date?

Thanks for all the help.I am going to try a restore to an early date.

All three of the last computers I have bought have a "drive d:" which has a complete system recovery installed. All you have to do is switch to drive d: and run the program and the computer is restored to the state it was just out of the box. Keep in mind, any files, programs, pictures, etc, will all be gone but you should have those backed up somewhere anyway.

If you feel you really want to start from the beginning and sometimes that is not a bad thing to do, it is not hard to do. First get off your hard drive any data, documents, photos, anything that you need to have because once you start this process it will all be erased. You also need all of the disks for the software that you have installed on the computer - every program that you want will require a disk and all installation code numbers for it. Then once you have checked at least three times that there is nothing on your computer any longer that you cannot live without you are ready to start.

Make sure your BIOS is set to start from CD/DVD Drive.

Format the C drive. This will wipe out the entire operating system and anything that is on the main hard drive.

Once formatted, shut down your computer and start it with the Windows OS disk in the drive (you are going to be asked for the install serial number so don't do any of this if you do not have that).

Your computer will start from the CD/DVD drive. It may ask you to partition the disk - it will step you through this if it does.

Then it will start the Windows installer. It may ask if you want to do a Full Install. The answer is yes. You are not upgrading from a former version of Windows this is a full clean install. (MAKE SURE that your Windows disk is a full version and not an update version.)

The rest Windows will walk you through. This whole process may take some time so make sure you have a number of hours free to do this all at once. Once Windows is installed your computer will start normally - and a lot faster. The first thing that will happen is that you will need to install new drivers for any peripherals and this may or may not be automatic - with plug and play devices it is usually automatic and the system will start looking for those and installing them - and may ask for your OK - so stick around by the screen. You may also be asked to do some Windows updates and these also take some time plus will require some input from you as it goes along.

Then you are ready to install all of your software. When you are finished it will run just like it did when you got it.

At this point it is a good idea to make a full backup of the computer's hard drive. This way if you ever have to do this again, you will have it all right there. In addition to this backup which you will keep an never change, make an other backup that you will have to update as you add or make changes to the software on your computer (monthly backup updates to this second backup). It is good to have a large USB hard drive to keep solely as a backup drive. Get yourself Acronis True Image backup software - it is simple and you do not have to reinstall Windows to restore your computer from the backup. It will save a lot of time and headache the next time you would like to do this.

Run CCleaner monthly. If the Windows temp directories get over 2 gig Windows can slow to a crawl. This goes for all versions 95 to 8. Check Task Manager for processes hogging memory/ cpu. More info though on what you are using is needed to get more specific.

Task Manager is a good place to start. It will identify what is running and which services are taking the most resources.

I doubt if adding memory will help much if your system speed has changed and you arent adding applications.

Depending on which Operating System you have (Windows XP, Vista, Win7, Win8, etc) with Vista or later you may have a "restore" capability to go back to factory stock or restore to an earlier date when you felt the PC was performing correctly.

You wont need your system disk if it is not corrupt. Answer the questions and we will continue to try to help.

You should still be able to launch Task Manager.

You may not need to do a factory restore. If your PC has been getting progressively slower over a long period of time that may be your best bet.

But if the problem just started recently it may be due to a program that stealth installed itself on your system, or something you allowed to install without realizing it.

Try booting into safe mode with networking and see if you have the same problems. If your problems disappear, you can try to find and remove the most recently installed programs, or just do a system restore.

For the suggestion about looking at task manager, I'm usually a fan but don't think it would work in this case. Sounds like the system is freezing up so the OP wouldn't be able to bring up task manager while the rogue program was consuming CPU. Perfmon running in the background would be a better choice IMO.

Sometimes people end up with rootkits. One way that gets rid of those is to run the backup utility (wbadmin), back the machine up to an external hard disk (make sure to save off all documents to another location just in case), then boot the Windows media and restore the machine from that backup. A rootkit hiding itself from a backup program will not be present in the saved image.

I second the recommendation on memory. Max the machine out if you can.

We need more info? What kind of computer, and what make and model? What version of Windows, and what browser?

It could be caused by a number of issues, malware, faulty process, stuck updates, etc. If its hardware overheating, do you hear increased fan noise when your computer slows?

Another check in the intern is to press CTL+SHFT+ESC keys which brings up Windows Task Manager, and press the Processes tab. Click CPU once or twice to see in any processes is taking up a lot of your CPU cycles?

It could also be a heat problem- when was the last time you cleaned it? It could well be a hardware problem, not software.