Computer

[K K Rossokolski]

I need to send my computer to the workshop. I may need to sell the house in order to afford the bill. These things will take time.

[Scud]

What's wrong with it?

Dave

[K K Rossokolski]

Thanks mate......My in-depth technical analysis is that it seems to be f*cked!!
Seriously, it appears to be constipated...starts up OK but it slows down quickly. The speed is 1.6 gHz but it often seems to forget the Giga.
The pie thingy says it has 150 or so gronkobagels, of which about 5/6 is free. I have a fixup program called Iobit Advanced System care which I run assiduosly Jams up quickly if I am reading newspapers, long threads,stuff like that. I use Mozilla as the browser. Gates doesn't need my money.

I took some stuff off it last night but only minor things except google earth. I don't use it for much other than reading stuff, some surfing, household accounts bit of eBay and Blitzing.
At my age, downloading dirty movies would have nostalgia effect only.

[Scud]

I'm guessing it's a laptop. You might have a spyware problem or a virus, but it might just need more RAM (random access memory). It's cheap. If you plan on keeping the computer rather than buying an expensive new one, it's the best thing you can do.

What happens is your computer starts up and loads what it needs into RAM, which is temporary memory, a chip, and really fast. Then when you do something, like open a browser, the browser first looks to save stuff to RAM and if there isn't enough, reverts to "virtual" memory, which is just a temporary spot on your hard drive. Hard drives are slow, comparatively, and you'll notice everything slowing down as soon as this happens. Gets painful as you try to do more things, like open a document while still having the browser open. The longer your computer stays on, the worse it gets.

Easiest way to see how much RAM you have and how much you can use is to go here: http://www.crucial.com and run the system scanner tool from their site. If you have under 512 mb, that's most likely your problem. You can install it yourself, it's easy. Unfortunately, the older the computer the more expensive RAM can be, but not always.

If it turns out you have over a gig of RAM already, then my suspicion would be spyware. Do you have anti-virus software and/or antispyware software on it? I can recommend free ones if you don't.

Let me know if I can help.

Dave

[Pointman]

Dave can you post a link to the free anti-virus and anti-spyware software please.
Thanks Bruce.

[Crossroads]

Dave can you post a link to the free anti-virus and anti-spyware software please.
Thanks Bruce.

My name's not Dave :smoke:, but here's a free software straight from the horse's mouth.

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

[Scud]

Anti-virus:
AVG: http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage
Avast: http://www.avast.com/index

Pretty sure both offer trial pay versions that revert to the free versions after the trial period ends, which I believe will include antispyware.

Anti-spyware:
Spybot: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/
Ad-aware: http://www.lavasoft.com/

I've used them all. all have pros and cons, but are great free products. Imperative to make sure they are updated regularly.

As for I'm not Dave's recommendation :whis:, I've never used Microsoft essentials, so dunno.

Have fun,
Dave

[K K Rossokolski]

What great help you blokes are. My machine is a basically a biggish screen with a computer inside and a CD drive on one edge, keyboard and rat.

I have Mcafee AntiVirus Plus and SecurityScan Plus as well as Windows Defender. The System Care does a malware scan along with temp file sweep etc
It has XP, and is a year old
I will do the RAM sweep later, as I am trying to type this with 2yo Chloe trying a few keys as she sits on my knee. Grandkids are one of life's greatest joys
Interestingly, since removing Google earth and the smaller stuff, things seem better. That to me might seem consistent with your RAM theory, Dave.

Once again,thanks to all.

[K K Rossokolski]

Copy of the scan:

* Maximum Memory Capacity: 2097152 MB
* Currently Installed Memory: 1024 MB
* Available Memory Slots: N.A.
* Total Memory Slots: 1
* Dual Channel Support: N.A.
* CPU Manufacturer: GenuineIntel
* CPU Family: Intel® Atom™ CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz Model 12, Stepping 2
* CPU Speed: 1596 MHz

[Scud]

1 MB RAM should be more than enough for XP, so I doubt that's the problem. Are the Macafee and System Care programs up to date? Do you know when they're scanning? Sometimes these programs will run scans automatically right when you're in the middle of something. Really slows stuff down. AVG does that, but I set it for 2 or 3 in the morning.

Next time it starts to chug, open the Macafee and see what's doing, if anything.

Another thing you could do to see what's eating up the CPU or the memory is to hold down the control/alt/delete keys at the same time. The task manager box will appear. First tab will tell you what applications are running. Second tab will tell you what processes. You can sort the process list by clicking CPU or memory or name. It's interesting to see what programs hog up the memory. If you want to know what a process does, like gnotify.exe, just google it. You can stop any process by hitting the end process button at the bottom of the window. I sometimes get two proceesses of Firefox running and the program won't open at all. I'll go in this way and end any I see running and that fixes it, otherwise I'd have to reboot.

All I can think of at the moment.

Dave