Strange Processing Noises - Help

Pythia

I've started having problems with my laptop after uploading a large amount of songs onto it from my very old ipod.

Whenever I used Limewire or Kazaa, my laptop would make this processing sound three times in a row about every ten seconds and the computer would get so slow it pretty much froze. This would continue for about ten minutes, then things would go back to normal.

Now that I've installed a new version of itunes (last night), the computer has been making this grunting or processing sound about every ten seconds and goes from being deathly slow to being quite slow but bearable. Turning it off hasn't helped, neither has removing itunes and quicktime.

Apart from deleting all my music (about 10gbs) which isn't backed up, how do I go about fixing this?

It's using Windows XP Professional SP 2.
Can give more info if needed.

Thanks for your help!

Khannie

The problem is almost certainly the crappy filesharing programs you've installed (limewire and kazaa).

I would suggest getting some spyware removal kit. Have a looksee in the free software sticky.

Pythia

Apparenty I also have low virtual memory now. Balloon just popped up.
I have AVG, spybot and adaware already installed.
Also, I've used Kazaa and Limewire no problem for years. I download about 4 songs a month so I hardly use them.

aidan_walsh

"Strange processing noises" are just lots of page file access so. Cut back on the number of processes running in the background, update and run your scanners just to be safe, and check see if there are any RAM hungry applications running.

The new versions of iTunes can leave some background processes running, AFAIR. You could shut these down, since he problem seems to hve stemmed from them.

Khannie

Pythia wrote:

Apparenty I also have low virtual memory now. Balloon just popped up.

This means that your system is definitely completely out of ram (i.e. too many applications are running). You can check what's being run at startup with one of the built in XP applications that I can't remember the name of (someone else will surely remember).

aidan_walsh

msconfig.

Ruu_Old

How much RAM have you got installed? Start->Run->msconfig.exe as aidan mentioned, in the box and click OK. Check the Startup tab and see what you have running in there, untick the boxes beside the app you wish to stop.

Khannie

aidan_walsh wrote:

msconfig.

That's the one. It actually feels good that I'm forgetting things like that.

sceptre

Pythia wrote:

Whenever I used Limewire or Kazaa, my laptop would make this processing sound three times in a row about every ten seconds and the computer would get so slow it pretty much froze. This would continue for about ten minutes, then things would go back to normal.

As the lads said, it's pretty much certainly the PC running out of real memory and shunting stuff out to the fake memory that exists as a large pagefile on your hard disk. Just FYI (and I apologise if you already know this), the grunting shunting sound is made by the hard disk itself, the heads repeatedly lifting and lowering on different parts of the disk as it searches for parts of the pagefile to use.

So given that itunes and all the other stuff have happily coexisted on your computer for a while and the problemn's only occurring now, you've probebly got some spyware using up memory that it didn't before (google for a reasonable free remover like adaware) and your hard disc could probably do with being drfragmented as well (the free tool supplied with windows isn't great but it's at least something - in windows explorer, right-click on the drive, go for Properties, Tools tab and select the Defragmentation option).

Tom Dunne

I would also check your disk space - low virtual memory could also indicate low disk space. Anything less than 500Mb and you are in trouble.

To free up disk space, move files off to CD/DVD/other hard disk.

Pythia

I brought it to the laptop fixing place in college yesterday. Turns out the hard drive is ****ed. So I'm getting a new one today under the warranty.
Thanks for your help anyway guys!