BSOD, slow icons on desktop.

bretttp1

PC Spec:
AMD 3700+, 1 Gig Ram, 2 X 6800gs, 20GB ide HD for windows xp SP2 only, 250 GB internal HD (storage, and all games installed), 320 gig external HD


I’ve recently noticed some problems with my PC it hangs when loading games, but only when its been on for a while (a couple of hours) after a restart all’s ok, also I’ve just installed MOH Airborne and this causes a BSOD intermittently when I try to run the game, I have got it going sometimes.
Also when I go into my computer it can take a while for the screen to populate, and the same occurs on returning to desktop.

I’ve run Ccleaner defragged all drives etc

I am running windows xp SP2 on a 20 GB ide hd and it has only 3.44 GB left, is this normal I thought that xp could run comfortably on 10 gb. Could this be the cause of my problems? Would a fresh install of windows do anything? Or would I be better getting a larger drive for windows to run on? Any other Ideas?

Thanks guys.

Kimbot

Remember that even tough there is 3+ Gig left your virtual memory to run apps is on that drive so the less disk space you have the slower it will get. All your temp files etc are going to be sotred on the main HDD so I would suggest getting around an 80gig drive as your primary and if the problem persists then its something else thats causing it.

bretttp1

Yeah I was thinking it couldn't be to good for the stability of my system to have such a small ammount of free space on the primary drive, but is it normal for windows and all associated software to take up so much space on a 20 GB drive?

Alun

bretttp1 wrote:

Yeah I was thinking it couldn't be to good for the stability of my system to have such a small amount of free space on the primary drive, but is it normal for windows and all associated software to take up so much space on a 20 GB drive?

I have a barebones XP SP2 set up as a VMWare virtual machine .. only XP SP2 + Office XP Pro + AVG antivirus, nothing else installed at all, and that's only 4.65GB, so you must have a lot more on that C: drive than just XP. Here's a handy little free utility for seeing where all that disk space is being used ...

http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml#treesize

bretttp1

Thanks for that Alun, I'll give that utility a go this eve and hopefully it should show where all the space has gone.

Alun

bretttp1 wrote:

Thanks for that Alun, I'll give that utility a go this eve and hopefully it should show where all the space has gone.

Often, even if you choose to install a piece of software on a drive other than C:, a lot of stuff gets installed there anyway. DLL's in "c:\windows\system32", config files and stuff in "c:\documents and settings\<user name>\application data" etc.

Also temporary files can really mount up over time, both in "c:\windows\temp" and "c:\documents and settings\<username>\local settings\temp". Well worth the occasional cleanout, followed by a defrag.

Plus your "My Documents" will be on C: by default unless you've moved it (look in the properties of My Documents, you can move it to wherever you like).