Dell Vostro 3550, VERY slow loading/running

[TheWildInside]

I have a four-year old Dell laptop running 64 bit, Win 7 Professional that is running frustratingly, excruciatingly slowly. Pretty much every piece of software takes forever to load, while I find something else to do nearby. And the sluggishness generally continues even once the software is open (online or off). It takes me forever to accomplish anything.

When this used to happen with my old Win 98 Dell Inspiron, I had a list of things I used to be able to do .. a sort of internal "shower" to clean up the sluggishness. I was told when I purchased my current laptop that things like Defrag were no longer required. So .. .what is? Is there anything I can do (besides maybe cleaning out temporary and no longer necessary files)?

I coordinate a local Arts Fest in my area in early July, and after the New Year, I'm usually going full tilt boogie with computer busy work. I fear the stress and frustration that the New Year holds for me if I can't speed things up a bit.

Any suggestions.

 

[Tmagic650]

Back up your important files and perform a (destructive) factory restore

 

[B00kWyrm]

Sounds like an issue I had with mine (Vostro 3550) a couple months ago.
I don't remember which process it was, but... it was taking up 100% of the processor.
What I did, as I recall...
Using the Nexus Dock tool (I dumped the Dell dock earlier).
You can see what process is your cpu hog.
Sometimes you can learn something more than using task manager,
but Task Manager (ctrl-alt-del) can provide similar information.
As I recall it was not a critical process, and I was able simply to end the task.
I think I unloaded/uninstalled that process too.
I am sorry I don't recall the details, but
maybe this can give you an alternate direction to work/try
before attempting Tmagic's suggestion.
If you want to check back as you go, I can try to help you further.