Be it humans or machines, if something starts going seriously wrong they tend to show signs or advance warnings before their failure. And if you catch these early signals, you can diagnose the issue and reach to the root cause of trouble. The same goes for laptops as well! Before your laptop completely breaks down it starts showing symptoms in advance which most of us often ignore. (Yes, we do)
But if we catch these minor signs and symptoms, you can prevent your laptop from crashing or breaking down. By the time you’ve finished reading this guide, you should have a much better sense of certain system issues that’ll help you fix your laptop.
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Let’s address these signs one by one in detail.
- When it Starts Running Sluggish as Snail
The sluggish performance of your laptop is the first tell-tale sign that you must start paying attention. Slow performance can be due various reasons like it might be infected by a virus or malware, or maybe a hacker has hijacked your machine and is secretly recording activities or any other probable reason whatsoever. Most of us often think that the slow performance of our laptop is due to its age. Well, to be true age has nothing to do about your laptop’s performance.
So, if you start to notice these symptoms already, then first perform a malware scan. To see a complete list of programs running in background of Windows, open Task Manager and thoroughly see the actively-running programs. If you spot anything weird then try to search for these processes online for a better understanding.
2. Persistent Error Messages
Getting occasional error message pop-ups is fine but if this keeps going on and on then you should start worrying. There are millions of processes running in the background of system and obviously we don’t know about all of them, right? But always remember the power of Google is just a click away. If you keep on getting same kind of error messages again and again then you might Google it to identify the error type.
If Google doesn’t help in hunting down the culprit, you might try running a virus scan. Make sure you maintain a regular backup of all important files and data so you never have anything at stake even if the system dies.
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3. Unrequested System Customizations
If you find that your system’s settings are being altered without your knowledge, there’s a huge chance your laptop has caught a virus. Such kind of actions you’ll probably notice first on your web browser. Like your default web browser will change, homepage settings will customize on their own, unknown browser extensions will get downloaded automatically etc.
So, as soon as you spot a suspicious change in your system’s behavior or any other setting customization that you didn’t ask for, start keeping an eye! To fight a potential infection, first roll back the changes. Like for starters you can try uninstalling your web browser and start fresh by re-installing and setting default settings once again.
4. Random Web Pop-ups
Dealing with web pop-ups is no big task, right? But closing the popup window ignoring them is not the ultimate solution! You should first try and know what kind of content the pop-up message is displaying. Random pop-ups are a signal that some malware has got hold of your system or maybe some virus is running in background.
To fight these intrusions, it is necessary that you keep bare minimum add-ons on your browser. This will solve half of the problem! You can uninstall unnecessary add-ons from your browser and see an improvement in performance.
5. Weird Noises
Last but not the least, not just your eyes but keep your ears open too! You should always keep an ear out to detect weird noises coming from hardware components. This basically happens when these internal components start wearing out and refuse to operate.
So, if you start hearing these weird and suspicious noises, first create a backup of all important files. Creating Backup is never the last resort, you should always maintain a regular habit of doing so to preserve your beautiful memories. If the weird noises persist and keep occurring on a regular basis, run a systems diagnostics program to figure out whether your laptop really is on its last legs.
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Hope you’ll not ignore these early signs depicting laptop trouble. The life of your system depends on how well you take care of it!