computer seems slow

  • Thread starter Thread starter Adam Russell
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A

Adam Russell

Often lately my computer seems overly slow. Its a little old, but not that
bad a computer. Athlon 2800, 1gig memory. Especially when I close a large
game (NWN2) then it seems to take a loong time to load IE for instance.
Makes me think that the computer is taking its sweet time freeing up the
memory from the already closed game. I already checked the memory using
memtest86 and its fine. Is there something else that may be making it act
sludgy? I have defragged, and there are no viruses/worms, and norton was
not updating or scanning at the time.
 
Adam said:
Often lately my computer seems overly slow. Its a little old, but not that
bad a computer. Athlon 2800, 1gig memory. Especially when I close a large
game (NWN2) then it seems to take a loong time to load IE for instance.
Makes me think that the computer is taking its sweet time freeing up the
memory from the already closed game. I already checked the memory using
memtest86 and its fine. Is there something else that may be making it act
sludgy? I have defragged, and there are no viruses/worms, and norton was
not updating or scanning at the time.
Click to expand...

Have you checked for spyware???
 
Adam Russell said:
Often lately my computer seems overly slow. Its a little old, but not
that bad a computer. Athlon 2800, 1gig memory. Especially when I close a
large game (NWN2) then it seems to take a loong time to load IE for
instance. Makes me think that the computer is taking its sweet time
freeing up the memory from the already closed game. I already checked the
memory using memtest86 and its fine. Is there something else that may be
making it act sludgy? I have defragged, and there are no viruses/worms,
and norton was not updating or scanning at the time.
Click to expand...

Honestly, I would still check Norton. I have helped more clients that have
had problems because of Norton (75-80% have slow response times, the rest
are slow internet or no internet at all). Beyond that I would guess what is
happening is that the games, or applications you are using are very memory
intensive. Your other favorite apps get purged from the cache to make room,
and therefore have to be loaded up from scratch. Which can make wait times
MUCH, MUCH longer.

-Chris
 
Adam said:
Yea, used both adaware and spybot.
Click to expand...

Have you done a CTRL+ALT+DEL to see what programs are currently
running? Also how much free space do you have on your HD? Having very
little free space or a HD encountering read/write problems might also
slow down your system. Also I am assuming that you have not altered
your settings for anti virus programs. Some like to do a lot behind
your back if you let them, like downloading updates and scanning your
system.
 
Ken said:
Have you done a CTRL+ALT+DEL to see what programs are currently running?
Also how much free space do you have on your HD? Having very little free
space or a HD encountering read/write problems might also slow down your
system. Also I am assuming that you have not altered your settings for
anti virus programs. Some like to do a lot behind your back if you let
them, like downloading updates and scanning your system.
Click to expand...

Yea, tried opening task manager and it doesnt appear that there is anything
using massive cpu or memory. Normally system idle process is up to 96-98%,
and max memory usage is IE with about 35-40 meg. Hard drive usage is 14G
out of 24, and I have run a prog called hard drive fitness test that shows
no problem. I also kind of doubt its norton because I know what that looks
like. When lag is due to updates Ill have a bunch of LUcallbackproxy's
running in taskmanager, and when its due to a scan then norton has a window
open. I kind of wonder if the motherboard may not be handling memory
correctly, or that somehow Im not really using all 1G of memory. Are there
diagnostics tests that test motherboards, or does that sound like im barking
up the wrong tree?
 
Adam said:
Yea, tried opening task manager and it doesnt appear that there is anything
using massive cpu or memory. Normally system idle process is up to 96-98%,
and max memory usage is IE with about 35-40 meg. Hard drive usage is 14G
out of 24, and I have run a prog called hard drive fitness test that shows
no problem.
Click to expand...

It looks like you covered many of the things I would have done. There
is a program called HDtach, but that probably does much of what you have
done with your hard drive fitness program. Also, the program aida32 has
a benchmark you can run. It does a test of memory reads and writes
which might be useful.
I also kind of doubt its norton because I know what that looks
like. When lag is due to updates Ill have a bunch of LUcallbackproxy's
running in taskmanager, and when its due to a scan then norton has a window
open.
Click to expand...

You could go into MSCONFIG and disable some programs to see if they
effected the speed. If not, you can then enable them again.

I kind of wonder if the motherboard may not be handling memory
correctly, or that somehow Im not really using all 1G of memory.
Click to expand...


You would think that the testing of your memory with memtest86 would
have established that all the memory was being accessed?
Are there
diagnostics tests that test motherboards, or does that sound like im barking
up the wrong tree?
Click to expand...
If you can do all the tests mentioned above successfully, I would not
think the MB would be the problem. But who knows??

There is however one thing you might check. Some MBs allow the
disabling of cache memory in CMOS. Make sure that it is enabled, for
any disabling of it would slow down the system dramatically.
 
Yea, tried opening task manager and it doesnt appear that there is anything
using massive cpu or memory. Normally system idle process is up to 96-98%,
and max memory usage is IE with about 35-40 meg. Hard drive usage is 14G
out of 24, and I have run a prog called hard drive fitness test that shows
no problem. I also kind of doubt its norton because I know what that looks
like. When lag is due to updates Ill have a bunch of LUcallbackproxy's
running in taskmanager, and when its due to a scan then norton has a window
open. I kind of wonder if the motherboard may not be handling memory
correctly, or that somehow Im not really using all 1G of memory. Are there
diagnostics tests that test motherboards, or does that sound like im barking
up the wrong tree?
Click to expand...

Well, if the system show 96-98% IDLE then I don't know why you have
slowness problem when the system says it has nothing to do.

Or the man tried to tell you to keep your eyes on whatever program eating
most of the CPU (or when the system reports 90-99% USED), not when nothing
is running.
 
Adam said:
Often lately my computer seems overly slow. Its a little old, but not that
bad a computer. Athlon 2800, 1gig memory. Especially when I close a large
game (NWN2) then it seems to take a loong time to load IE for instance.
Makes me think that the computer is taking its sweet time freeing up the
memory from the already closed game. I already checked the memory using
memtest86 and its fine. Is there something else that may be making it act
sludgy? I have defragged, and there are no viruses/worms, and norton was
not updating or scanning at the time.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure but I'd like to think no matter how large the RAM is (1
gig is huge--I use 256 meg), some programs will still use virtual
memory. In that case you should have a large enough swap file (like 2
gig). I do recall when I had too little virtual memory my computer
would pop up a dialog telling me it was going to increase it. It would
then be reaaalllly slow after that. When I increased the size of vitual
memory the problem went away for good.
 
Dan said:
I'm not sure but I'd like to think no matter how large the RAM is (1
gig is huge--I use 256 meg), some programs will still use virtual
memory. In that case you should have a large enough swap file (like 2
gig). I do recall when I had too little virtual memory my computer
would pop up a dialog telling me it was going to increase it. It would
then be reaaalllly slow after that. When I increased the size of vitual
memory the problem went away for good.
Click to expand...

Try some program does need memory for speed like Photoshop then you will
see a huge difference. And yes, plenty of disk space for swapping, and
clean hard drive for better performance can make some difference too.

256M of memory, you may have to pay me to use the computer as it just
won't work for me. Or I may use with at least 1G, but all my computers
(except notebooks) have 2GB minimum, and the one I am using has 3GB of
memory.
 
go to RUN in start menu and type msconfig and goto startup.. You may have a
lot of backgroung programs running at startup. I only have 2 running(ehtry
and a scheduler) everything else I turned off. I only turn my zonealarm
firewall on when I plug into the internet.

--
Love and Teach, Not Yell and Beat
Stop Violence and Child Abuse.
No such thing as Bad Kids. Only Bad Parents.
The most horrible feeling in the world is knowing that No One is There to
Protect You.

A64 3500+, Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939,AIW 9800 Pro 128mb
MSI 550 Pro, X-Fi, Pioneer 110D, 111D
Antec 550 watt,Thermaltake Lanfire,2 Gb OCZ Platinum 2-3-2-5
2XSATA 320gb Raid Edition, PATA 120Gb
XP MCE2005, 19in Viewsonic,BenchMark 2001 SE- 19074
Games I'm Playing- Falcon 4, winSPWW2, winSPMBT, Call of Duty War Chest
 
VanShania said:
go to RUN in start menu and type msconfig and goto startup.. You may have a
lot of backgroung programs running at startup. I only have 2 running(ehtry
and a scheduler) everything else I turned off. I only turn my zonealarm
firewall on when I plug into the internet.
Click to expand...

But from the information of original poster saying Task Manager reports
98% System Indel which means about NONE program running to cause any
slowness problem.
 
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