The age old question...

How do I speed up my desktop and laptop?

First, what I think I am doing right: I am running Windows 7. Chrome is my browser. I have AVG on both systems. Very few programs are ever running in the background (none of which are torrents or anything). I occasionally run CCleaner or do a defrag.

But I noticed on bootup sometimes my rigs just take minutes to really get going after I get to my desktop. Sometimes my browser will get a "not responding" for 30 seconds or go, or the window won't pop open for 20 seconds after clicking the icon.

Any advice? Any chrome extensions to try?

I could recommend you getting SSD for OS (60Gb will do), if you have bigger budget then it's 120Gb Samsung EVO.

From what I see you're probably using really really old PC and Laptop.

SSD will improve performance for boot up time and running programs.

@PredatorRules:

The laptop is from 09. The desktop maybe, late 2010?

Full specs.

Date of purchase doesn't mean nothing to me, you could buy junk laptop and PC today as well.

Take a look and see what's running when you start your computer. From your search/run box in Start, type in msconfig and see if there is anything you can disable in the startup tab. Then you've got all the usual normal house cleaning steps from there such as defraging your drive, running an update scan (then install said updates), disk cleanup, virus check, etc. After that, maybe adding a bit of RAM could help, as I'm not sure what you've got installed now. Try and clean out the dust to make sure you aren't having a heat issue that is throttling down the computer, even though I know you said it was slow right at the start, but hey...maintenance is maintenance right?

Delete system32

Just kidding,don't do this seriously.

@PredatorRules:

Laptop: Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.53GHz

4 GB RAM

Windows 7 64bit

Actually I just realized I am still on SP1...how the heck?

Reformat your harddrive and re-install windows is usually the best option (although not a lot of people want to back all there files up since you lose everything when you re-format).

If your specs are decent and you don't want to reformat then delete every program you don't use (via control panel) and use a defragmenter or program like CCleaner to fix errors

This, before buying new hardware it's always good to try a fresh install of OS.

in ccleaner if you go into the tools menu, there's a tab called startup. you can see and disable programs that run at startup that you don't need.

My startup takes minutes aswell. Dont know what to do about it

after mass cleanup with ccleaner, and u still get unfavourable results, try a fresh OS install. Failing that, a fresh hard drive install is best (SSD being the natural choice for a massive startup boost)