Slow Windows... ideas?

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Discussion

rico

Original Poster:

7,916 posts

256 months

Friday 10th June 2005
quotequote all
I'm using my Mum's PC for a few days at home. The computer is a 2Ghz AMD with GeForce4 so not ancient.

It loads up as normal relatively fine. Then once Windows is up it takes aaagggeeesss to load whatever program I double click on, eg. IE.

Once the program is loaded it all seems to work fine. Also once the initial program is loaded, others load fine as well, its the initial startup of programs that takes forever.

Any ideas? My old 1Ghz PC works faster than this...

:scratchchin:

Podie

46,630 posts

276 months

Friday 10th June 2005
quotequote all
Spyware..? Nice little virus..?

JamieBeeston

9,294 posts

266 months

Friday 10th June 2005
quotequote all
2ghz AMD, or 2GHz Equiv AMD.

Could well be lack of ram causing it to page out to disk alot.. Right click on the Start menu bar, somewhere in the middle, and choose Task Manaer

then see how much ram you are using (commit charge x/x)

then goto the performance tab and see how much Physical Memory you have Total / Available.

J

FlossyThePig

4,083 posts

244 months

Friday 10th June 2005
quotequote all
How big is the hard disk and when was it last defragged?

Not enough spare room on the disk can slow things down dramatically.

Hugh

>> Edited by FlossyThePig on Friday 10th June 12:37

rico

Original Poster:

7,916 posts

256 months

Friday 10th June 2005
quotequote all
Podie said:
Spyware..? Nice little virus..?


Mum's got the latest Norton and she claims its noticeably slower since that was installed.

I miss my Mac...

rico

Original Poster:

7,916 posts

256 months

Friday 10th June 2005
quotequote all
FlossyThePig said:
How big is the hard disk and when was it last defragged?

Not enough spare room on the disk can slow things down dramatically.


35gb harddrive with 25gb free...

Podie

46,630 posts

276 months

Friday 10th June 2005
quotequote all
rico said:

FlossyThePig said:
How big is the hard disk and when was it last defragged?

Not enough spare room on the disk can slow things down dramatically.



35gb harddrive with 25gb free...


... and NTFS (which most are formated as these days) isn't quite as prone to defragmentation...

GregE240

10,857 posts

268 months

Friday 10th June 2005
quotequote all
Andy,

Alternatively go to My Computer, right click, Properties will tell you how much physical memory is installed. 256Mb *will* work, but with all the programs and tasks running by default it will soon swallow this up. As others have said, once this gets too low Windows will start paging out to disk, which REALLY slows things down.

I'd recommend minimum these days of 512Mb RAM, 1Gb if you can go to it.

A Defrag will help too.

Thats about all I can think of, unless your motherboard is incorrectly configured for the speed of RAM you've got installed. Doubt its that though.

Greg

JamieBeeston

9,294 posts

266 months

Friday 10th June 2005
quotequote all
rico said:

Podie said:
Spyware..? Nice little virus..?



Mum's got the latest Norton and she claims its noticeably slower since that was installed.

I miss my Mac...

It will be, norton canes the CPU as it scans every single burp / hiccup / breath it takes!

The price of safety!

rico

Original Poster:

7,916 posts

256 months

Friday 10th June 2005
quotequote all
Thanks Jamie, Greg et all.

Just talked it through with Jamie, seems mum's pc is lacking in RAM big time...

Sorry for the blonde questions, haven't used PCs for 3+ years.

Cheers

scruffy

3,757 posts

262 months

Friday 10th June 2005
quotequote all
What operating system - NT4, 95, XP, etc?

How many bits of spyware/pop up blockers are installed and running?

How many other programs are running in the background? In XP (i'm assuming...), press Ctrl/Alt/Del, and look at the 'applications that are running, they should tell you what programs you know you have open. Then click on the Processes tab and tell me what looks surreal to you...

You're not inadvertantly downloading stuff from some dodgy modem dailer?

How much RAM do you have on the system?

As has been mentioned, Defrag the drive, and maybe run a memory optimiser.

I can help, but need more info - e:mail me if you like...

rico

Original Poster:

7,916 posts

256 months

Friday 10th June 2005
quotequote all
Cheers Scruffy. The RAM is tiny... less than 256mb. I'll upgrade that first then see if its still slow. Thanks for the offer and expect an email if the RAM upgrade doesn't help

JamieBeeston

9,294 posts

266 months

Friday 10th June 2005
quotequote all
rico said:
Cheers Scruffy. The RAM is tiny... less than 256mb. I'll upgrade that first then see if its still slow. Thanks for the offer and expect an email if the RAM upgrade doesn't help

192mb in fact

Making it about as fast as bebbesen on a sunday run

mcflurry

9,101 posts

254 months

Friday 10th June 2005
quotequote all
I find that my 2.8ghz machine with 1024mb of ram runs xp with all its patches, spyware blockers, virus checkers etc about the same speed as my AMD P900 ran Win98 4/5 years ago with "only" 512mb of ram...

wiggy001

6,545 posts

272 months

Friday 10th June 2005
quotequote all
rico said:

Podie said:
Spyware..? Nice little virus..?



Mum's got the latest Norton and she claims its noticeably slower since that was installed.

I miss my Mac...


Hehe... funny that someone asks about Spyware and you mention Norton. In my eyes, Norton is worse that spyware!