4 year old VAIO laptop

[boothstuart5]

4 year old SONY Laptop (Feb 2013) is getting slower. Now takes an average of 4-5 mins before I get my Desktop and a further 2-3 mins before the task bar becomes active (7mins). I'm using explorer because the security on the Win10 is too aggressive for my uses (MSN, facebook, email and photos). The MSN launches from the task bar with explorer and takes another 3-4 mins after which it keeps stopping "MSN is not responding", which then takes another 2-3 mins to re-activate. Can't afford to replace it, but should I really need to?

[AFR0N1]

It could be a problem with your hard drive. My dad's laptop (non Sony laptop) was experiencing the same thing and after a week or so the hard drive failed and he then had to get a new one.

I would back up everything as soon as possible.

I would also check the health of the hard drive. open vaio care, click on diagnostics, then hard drive, there is two options, one is a quick scan and the other is a full scan, the full scan can take a few hours and the quick scan should take about 5 mins. I would do the quick scan first because it will tell you if your hard drive needs defragmenting.

I would also go into task manager (right click the task bar and select task manager) go tho the start up tab and then dissable any un nessasary startup applications.

You could also put your ear next to the laptop and listen out for the hard drive.

A good hard drive will make very quiet and occasional noises.

A bad one could make louder squeaking noises.

Watch some youtube vids on failing hard drives and listen to those sounds and compare them with the noises that your laptop is making.

Hope this helps