I have a new Dell Dimension Desktop that came with Windows Vista Home basic. At first everything was fine, but now it is running EXTREMELY slowly. I thought maybe it could be infected with a virus or something, so I ran a scan with Norton security. The scan came back and didn't find anything, not even one cookie, so I know it didn't scan properly. Then a thing came up and said Norton needed to download updates, so I clicked OK to get the updates. However, my computer will NOT download them! The connection either times out or the updates get to a certain point, about 65%, and then just never finish. Why can't I download the updates? Why is Vista so slow? Its driving me CRAZY!!!

Hello!

Sorry to hear about that. I work for Tier 3 at T-Mobile, and we handle all the data aspects of the company. 80% of our business is working with laptops/desktops and a lot of calls coming in are on Vista. What I, and my co-workers have personally noticed is that Windows Vista Home Basic, is crap. That's the clean, unfiltered truth. I personally have Home Premium, and I've had my fair share of problems with it, but I can just imagine the thousands of frustrated people with Basic. So, I highly recommend downgrading (in my opinion upgrading) to XP Pro. If that's not an option, upgrade to Premium. If that's not an option you can look at all the different settings to see if you can smooth things up a bit.

First, check Start - then type in MSCONFIG in the search box. Then, go to the services tab. Click on the box listed "hide all microsoft services". Then, disable all. This will disable all services from running besides microsofts that are required to run your comp. You can browse through the list for spyware and anti-virus that you want to run. Then, go to the startup tab and disable all there, and again, go through the list to see if theres anything specific you really want/need to startup when your comp starts up. Then click ok, and restart. This will make it so your computer doesn't load unneccasary programs at startup that can make your computer lag. I believe vista automatically has defrag set up to do it in the background, but just in case you can do it manually. Although, that shouldn't be the problem. As far as why norton can't connect to do the update. Could be anything. Is windows firewall on? ANy other firewalls running? Try reinstall? I personally am not a fan of norton one bit. I recommend going to download.com and downloading AVG Anti Virus, and/or Zone Alarm firewall. Both free, got awards and all, very popular, and most important - very effective. As far as spyware - Spybot search and destroy is great. Free as well.

Good luck!

The first thing to check for is malware. Try these free, online scans:
http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/sandbox...s%2Fdefault.htm (requires IE)
http://housecall.trendmicro.com

If they don't show any malware, then I'd have to suspect your system's specs. Typically Vista Home Basic systems come with only 512 mB of RAM - and after running it for a couple of months it clogs up and refuses to respond well. This is (IMO) to when XP first came out and system makers sold systems with only 128 mB of RAM - it worked fine until you started to use it. I've had 2 systems with Home Basic and they've both worked fine as long as I restricted what the users could do with them.

Take a look at your Windows Experience Score at Control Panel\System and Maintenance\Performance Information and Tools to see if the RAM is the only thing holding your performance back. If it is the most significant thing, then I'd suggest investing in some more RAM. That combined with some system tweaking/cleaning and you should be able to run Home Basic without any issues.