how do i slow my computer down please.

this may seem strange but id like to slow my computer. its too popular in my house i never get to have a turn - i bought it for the speakers not the performance. if it was slower it would always be available. maybe.

toshiba laptop i5 6 gigs windows seven.

what would be really good is if it went laggy when websurfing.
id ask on a computer forum but i dont know any, and this is the cafe.

cheers

You could set a cpu benchmark running in the background, chewing up all the resources. Prime Number searching is a good option. Everything else running will be slow. Or you could put that cpu time to good use and run SETI or climate prediction software.

If you have them set to run constantly, and as a high priority, everything else will run like a dog.

Failing all of that, you could always hit the person using it repeatedly until they let you on.

run 100 windows of IE, Prime85, and a bunch of productivity benchmarks...If you've got a crappy graphics card, run a bunch of gaming benchmarks.... just be sure it doesn't overheat.

i was really hoping for a way to restrict the ram it can use. so it doesnt heat up or flatten the battery. got to go to work now, but ill follow that prime number link tonight. i like prime numbers .

it has a 1 gig graphics card. is there a way to tell windows not to use it, to disable the card.?

One Gig... Holy *$%%! Nope, its as it is....man, I see why people would want to use it.... You could scrounge up some crappy ram and put it in there, taking the ram in there out, but thats risky. I say just run prime and productivity benchmarks...sysmark 2007, something like that.

Require password on startup. Keep the password to yourself.

It's your computer, which you bought. No need to tamper with it to make it unpleasant for others to use, just put your foot down.

Diesel_Bomber said:

Require password on startup. Keep the password to yourself.

It's your computer, which you bought. No need to tamper with it to make it unpleasant for others to use, just put your foot down.

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Absolutely! Heck, most machines nowadays have a BIOS boot password if you really need to get strict.

And never, EVER let anyone else use an administrator account on your Windows machine under ANY circumstances! Well, unless you love un-FUBAR-ing Windows, that is.

Diesel_Bomber said:

Require password on startup. Keep the password to yourself.

It's your computer, which you bought. No need to tamper with it to make it unpleasant for others to use, just put your foot down.

Click to expand...

exactly, man up and use it whenever you damn well please. no sense in dumbing it down.

You can always pull stuff out of it.

Absolutely no way my household could run on one computer; my wife would get Facebook withdrawal, and I wouldn't be able to post here (I'm typing this on my Android phone, my wife is on the iPad next to me with one of the laptops between us.)

Even if all you can afford is some [manufacturer] refurb laptop, invest in another machine, it's worth it.

You could visit some sketchy websites and pick up some malware, that'd slow it down a bit I suppose. :shrug:

Lower your NIC speed. Say 10Mbps (or lower), half duplex instead of auto detect.

beerwax said:

what would be really good is if it went laggy when websurfing.

Click to expand...

Get AT&T, you'll be golden.

StarHalo said:

Even if all you can afford is some [manufacturer] refurb laptop, invest in another machine, it's worth it.

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There are a number of companies that sell computers that are off-lease from businesses that replace their machines every few years. Obviously they're not cutting edge, but it's a great way to get a good workhorse machine for cheap. One company I've dealt with before is selling Dell Latitude Core2Duo D630s in various configurations for under $300 each, and they have a section for desktop machines under $100. Those are mostly Pentium 4 machines - but if someone just needs a spare box for web browsing and email, they'll do.

Instead of speed, how about color? Turn # of colors down to like 16 and all videos and photos will look like crap.

"Upgrade" the RAM to 1GB. It's probably running a 64-bit OS, so 1GB RAM should be enough to slow it to a crawl.

Diesel_Bomber said:

Require password on startup. Keep the password to yourself.

It's your computer, which you bought. No need to tamper with it to make it unpleasant for others to use, just put your foot down.

Click to expand...

Going through the same trouble with my daughter... Be firm... Buy her a computer and get a router that allows you to set bandwidth useage through wireless and just crank it down!!!

If you simply want the machine to lag, check out the bios settings. If you for instance disable CPU caching, you will reduce the speed to a crawl.

To make surfing the net unpleasant, you could run very strict security settings. Half of the webpages won't function properly anymore.

If the other people are computer savy, all that won't last long, though.

I second the second machine for the other persons...

beerwax said:

this may seem strange but id like to slow my computer. its too popular in my house i never get to have a turn - i bought it for the speakers not the performance. if it was slower it would always be available. maybe.

Click to expand...

Here's another thought; it's a laptop. Unplug it, and lock it up somewhere (desk drawer, etc.) when you're not using it, if you don't want to set passwords.

Far less hassle in my view than un-doing a bunch of software fiddles any time YOU want to use it unhindered.

I used to have a plugin for Firefox that would let you set the maximum download speed for it. You could go as slow as 1kb/s if you wanted.

Another thing now, is that Mozilla went the dumb route, and is using IE to get to the internet, so if you want to disable web browsing, you can open up IE, and do this:

Tools>Internet Options>Connections Tab>LAN Settings>Proxy Server> Enter 0.0.0.0

Kills all access to the internet. It's bloody stupid that Mozilla is running through IE now, because I used to have IE's connection disabled, so Micro$%^# couldn't force updates on me, and also to keep viruses and other garbage from getting access to the internet (90% of em used IE to access the outside world).

~Brian