Hi to everyone,

My system is running slower and slower.
I have Ubuntu 14.04.
I ran clamtk anti-virus and found several trojans that I quarantined, did not change anything.
Sometimes the active program window appears greyed out and the system is very slow to boot and shut down.
I don't have any programs installed other than Firefox and open office.

Any help is appreciated

What is you're pc's specs and how old?
Have a look at the system monitor, what is maxing out? network, ram, cpu, disk?

Possibly a reinstall would help(backup first). It might also be a chance to upgrade to a newer version. I've heard the latest(quantum) Firefox is much faster.

Maybe you need a lighter distro such as xubuntu, lubuntu, etc.
In my experience somtimes the hardware gets slower as it slowly wears out.

Thank you for you're precious recommendations.

My pc is an 8 year old laptop, i5 cpu, 4Gb ram and 750 gig Hard drive.
It always ran good and suddenly it it got slow.
I guess I will re-install Ubuntu 14.04 to check if it is a hardware problem.
I could have non detected virus by clam tk, I wonder If there is a better anti-virus for linux.
I'ts a shame because I was curious as to how to fix it without re-installing...

Check your system monitor or htop(you might have to install this), as mentioned in previous post. It will tell you what process(es) is slowing it down.

Also check your disk space.

You might be able to just live boot and see if this improves performance.

You are right a reinstall should be the last resort.

That's just finding malware for Windows that you've accidentally downloaded. I don't know of any Linux viruses.

It can't be a problem with your choice of distro, as you didn't have it when you first installed Ubuntu.

That sounds more like a hardware problem. If you had some process hogging the system, it wouldn't affect the display or slow the boot (when it wouldn't have started).

It could be the CPU overheating and putting the brakes on rather than shutting down all together. You probably have lm-sensors installed, so set it up with
sudo sensors-detect
and accept all its suggestions. Then you can check the current temperature with the command sensors.

Just throwing it out there but could be possibly due to the meltdown and spectre patches? I know that u will see a little bit of performance issues with older machines compared to the newer hardware that can handle them better.

I personally try to speed up my Distros by downloading either the Unity Tweak Tool or Compiz Setting Manager to get rid of some unnecessary animations and graphics. Can possibly update to Ubuntu 16.04 or try it out with live first to see if it will better support your hardware? Adding more ram and an SSD will definitely help things out some but can uninstall some shit and check the swap

I agree with DavidMcCann though. I never had any issues with any viruses in linux before. It will just pick up a couple false positives when I download an ebook or something

That's quite a lot of information, I will have to work on it and get back here...

On the boot up and shutdown, is the total time longer and/or is the text scrolling slowly. I agree with DavidMcCann that you might have cpu heating.

Is the CPU getting hotter as it's getting old?
Should I update the bios/CPU firmware?
I have a fan under my laptop.

The text is not scrolling slowly.
The total bootup/shutdown is 3-4 minutes.
(it used to be 20 seconds for both)

try to clean your vents/fans...make sure laptop is unplugged and off. Personally I think a vacuum works better then the air cans...suck (or blow your preference) all the vents on the sides, back and sometimes they are underneath as well.

I had to do this to my wifes blow dryer the other day, she claimed we needed a new one since the air was not as hot or as strong, I opened up the back and only God knows how it was even getting air between being clogged with dust and other stuff (some of her hair). Anyway the vacuum cleaned it up, and its "like brand new" again.

Did you run the sensors command David mentioned?

That looks to me like the hard drive beginning to slow. (I see Mill J mention disk space, which I agree with also).

Can always take it apart to clean it up, especially around the fan. Would be shutting down if over heated past a certain point.

* Can install "lm-sensors" and type "$ sensors" in terminal to get the temps, fan speed, voltages

* Can install "smartctl" or "badblocks" to test ur hdd

* Can install "memtest" to make sure ram is good

* Can even install something like "glances" after u install "lm-sensors" and will warn u when system is critical and what caused it

Sounds maybe like one of those situations where logging is enabled but log rotation is not. Logs can get so big they take enormous time to read and write.

I'm taking the space of Ubuntu, the swap file and 4 gig of data, all the rest of the 750 gig is free, the hard drive is newer than the computer, that is 2 years.
About the system overheating, I will try lmsensors the check it.
I checked my ram today with memtest and It shows that it's fine.
I will clean the interior of the laptop also (especially around the cpu)
Thank you jackpot for the "glances" suggestion.