Speeding Up My Laptop

[korme]

My laptop has been running like garbage lately. Incredibly slow. It's only 2 years old, and is a very good piece of equipment, but for instance... with only Firefox running (and a handful of tabs open), my computer is having trouble playing a YouTube video without lag. What have I seemingly done here? Any quick fixes?

[Matthean]

CCleaner and Hijackthis are good to install and run. Run msconfig on your computer if it's running windows and you can see what is running in terms of processes and for start up.

[EagleFan]

Try using 220...

Now on a serious note: Have you installed a lot of software (or installed, removed, reinstalled)? If so, it would actually help if you uninstalled a lot of what you have on the laptop (save all your data though); defrag and then re-install.

[SnowMan]

Could also check to make sure CPU throttling isn't enabled permanently, even when it's plugged in. Mine did that once...