Can't find out why friend's parent's computer is so slow

General Topics
1

So a few months ago, my friend’s parents bought a brand new HP desktop, with 4GBs of RAM, and a dual-core AMD processor. For some reason, it is running really slow. Today for example, I went to right-click on a folder, and it took ten seconds for the menu to pop up. I have run a full scan with Avast! and Malwarebytes, and both found nothing. I ran Windows memory diagnostics and checkdisk, and both were fine. I checked their performance when idling, and their CPU was at 0%, and they had 2.9GB of RAM not being used. Am I missing something? Why is their computer so slow?

2

Right-click being slow could be a context menu issue. However, that may not be the problem - what other things are slow? It does not sound like an Avast issue if the CPU usage is 0%. Have you tried disabling Avast to see if the situation changes?

3

What operating system?
What AMD processor?
What pre-loaded HP applications are running?

4

OS is Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 @ 2.6Ghz (thought it was an AMD)

hp processes
-hp DVDsmart resident
-hp remote solution
-hp advisor
-hp sysdrv
-hp wuSchd

Those are just the HP processes running

5

Use PC Decrapifier to remove unnecessary bloatware that will free up processes and resources.

http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

6

Have you tried some cleaning ?

CCleaner http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
Defraggler http://www.piriform.com/defraggler
Eusing Free Registry Cleaner 2.6 http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_cleaner/registry_cleaner.htm
StartUpLite http://www.malwarebytes.org/startuplite.php

7

I have used CCleaner on it. haven’t defragged yet. That decrapifier doesn’t seem like it would delete any programs on their computer.

8

Asking again, what other activities are slow? The one example you quoted could be a very specific problem caused by just one badly written application messing up the context menu. It points to nothing other than that. Some idea of other symptoms would be helpful, eg browser slow, slow opening or saving files etc.

As far as CCleaner goes, did you do both the standard analysis and the registry cleaning (not that either should radically affect a PC of the specified capability)?