Laptop problem(s?); Urgent.

[Rogan]

Hey there,

Sort of urgent to get this fixed as I leave for school in a few weeks and need to know whether this is something I can fix or something I'll have to have looked at. So I have a Toshiba Satellite A505-S6965. It'll be a year old come mid August, so its still pretty new. Recently (within the past 2 months or so) its been giving me a lot of problems. Such as: google chrome crashing, random crashes, very VERY slow perdormance, gaming no longer working, and all of a sudden, firefox crashing. It now also takes a very long time to start up/loas my desktop. And what little I can do is very unresponsive and time-consuming.

I have Avira Antivirus, which scans daily and has come up with no viruses. No other important software comes to mind.

Anyway, these problems seem to have come from nowhere and I have no idea what has caused them or how to get rid of them. Here's some of my 'specs' for more information:

Toshiba Satellite A505-6965
Intel Core2 Duo P7350 (2.0GHz)
4GB RAM, 500GB HDD
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 (512 MB)
Running Windows Vista (inb4: vista is ur problem)

Please, please give me some advice. It would be much appreciated. Hell, just from the time it took me to make this post my desktop still hasn't loaded since entering my password.

(Oh, and I'm posting from a different computer.)

[Icari]

run some anti-spyware anti-maleware programs and if that does not help your next best option since you have time is to reformat the laptop and reinstall the os, which should help either way.

[Cephius]

Sounds like you should just go ahead and reformat the laptop.

[Rogan]

Sounds like a plan. I'm not going to lie and say I know what I'm doing, I'm pretty terrible with this kind of stuff. What's the safest way to reformat my computer? Feel free to use little words, haha.

(Sorry I'm so difficult)

Edit: Oh, and I don't know if this helps pinpoint my problem at all, but just ran Windows problem finder and said the problem was a 'bluescreen.' I searched for a solution but to no avail.

[Omniyoji]

He can give system restore a shot if he can go back that far...
At least it's faster than reinstalling.

[Icari]

He can give system restore a shot if he can go back that far...
At least it's faster than reinstalling.

that does not guarantee that will get rid of all the problems, a reformat will.

[Cephius]

Sounds like a plan. I'm not going to lie and say I know what I'm doing, I'm pretty terrible with this kind of stuff. What's the safest way to reformat my computer? Feel free to use little words, haha.

(Sorry I'm so difficult)

Edit: Oh, and I don't know if this helps pinpoint my problem at all, but just ran Windows problem finder and said the problem was a 'bluescreen.' I searched for a solution but to no avail.

You're going to want to backup everything you want on your computer, as reformatting destroys all the data.

You need a Windows CD, you probably got one when you first got the laptop. If you don't have it, see if you can borrow one from a friend or just burn a copy from the internet. Anyway, once you have it, throw it in the drive and select your DVD drive as your boot device. You'll see the windows setup screens, just choose to format any partitions and let Windows install itself.

Once you get back into Windows, you'll need to download drivers from the Toshiba website so you can use the network card, get the right resolution, etc. That's basically all there is to it.