Slow PC!!

thecleverone

Hi everyone

I know this is probably a really basic query, but my PC (which is approx 1 year old, and i work on every day) has really started to slow down. Opening simple MS word documents, or tabbing to a new window on explorer is taking longer and longer. Its seriously driving me insane!!

I know nothing about computers at all but i have checked my hard drive memory and it seems i have plenty left. I have 103GB free of 146GB. So its not a space issue.

Anyone have any simple ways in which i can speed up my computer? Or could someone explain possible reasons as to its slow down?

Thanks a million.
the(notso)cleverone!

far2gud

Hi,

When you say you have 103GB OF 146GB you are referring to hard drive space. The main component that causes slowdown like this is your not your hard drive but your system memory.

The first thing I would do is remove any unnecessary programs from add/remove programs through the control panel and remove any loose files from your desktop as this can slow things down.
Next follow the steps below


Click Start>Run>Type "msconfig" without the brackets and press Enter

On the startup tab remove anything you think you dont need. (you may be prompted for a restart)


Next download this, install it and run it to clean out uneeded files and registry keys.

Also run a virus scan from here, just in case you have any viri slowing you down.

mukki

hmmmm a slow pc i have seen this problem before


op what you need to do is.... go into your add remove programs and uninstall any software with the words "norton" or "mcaffe" in it

reboot and install avg free


enjoy your new high speed pc

Anti

mukki wrote: »

hmmmm a slow pc i have seen this problem before


op what you need to do is.... go into your add remove programs and uninstall any software with the words "norton" or "mcaffe" in it

reboot and install avg free


enjoy your new high speed pc

+1

irlrobins

mukki wrote: »

hmmmm a slow pc i have seen this problem before


op what you need to do is.... go into your add remove programs and uninstall any software with the words "norton" or "mcaffe" in it

reboot and install avg free


enjoy your new high speed pc

Not sound advice without knowing anything more about the OP's PC. It could well be his work PC, and McAfee or Norton are required under the company policy.

In addition, you have no proof that an AV program is the cause of the slow down.

mukki

irlrobins wrote: »

Not sound advice without knowing anything more about the OP's PC. It could well be his work PC, and McAfee or Norton are required under the company policy.

In addition, you have no proof that an AV program is the cause of the slow down.

as for the company policy, i didnt feel it was a work computer from his OP but it could easliy be so your right...
op ignore my post above if its an office pc

but I am sure that every computer will be (and feel) a lot faster and it will give less problems once you remove the mcafee and norton "anti" virus

Ghost Train

I'd say run taskmanager and have a look and see if you can see if any particular process is using a high percentage of the cpu when its slowing down

start->run->taskmgr
or ctrl+alt+del->taskmanager

h2s

mukki wrote: »

as for the company policy, i didnt feel it was a work computer from his OP but it could easliy be so your right op ignore above if its an office pc

but I am sure that every computer will be (and feel) a lot faster and it will give less problems once you remove the mcafee and norton "anti" virus

IME AV progs like Norton & Mcaffee are major problems of slowing machines. Nearly every month I have someone coming to me with this problem and 90% it is one of these progs causing the problem especially mcafee antispam.

However, there are other thing to look at namely:

run a chkdsk/f first, then run a hard drive cleaner program like hdcleaner to clear out all the temp files.

Following that use a registry cleaner program and finally a good defag like o&o.

AVG is a great AV program and uses little resources.

thecleverone

Hi everyone

Thanks a million for all your advice. I went along with the following:

Click Start>Run>Type "msconfig" without the brackets and press Enter
On the startup tab remove anything you think you dont need. (you may be prompted for a restart)

Next download this, install it and run it to clean out uneeded files and registry keys

Its worked a treat. It is a work computer, but i am self employed so i can add/remove whatever programs i feel may be causing a problem. For the record, i use AVG because Norton and McAfee did my head in on my last computer. Havent installed them on this one. Find AVG is way less hassle!

Thanks again for all your suggestions, i'm no longer fit to throw my PC out the window :eek: .... oh and by the way.. i always laugh when people presume i'm male because of my user name (happens a lot)... nope, i'm definitely a girl

irlrobins

thecleverone wrote: »

nope, i'm definitely a girl

Pics, or it didn't happen....:p

zilog_jones

Also, try defragmenting your hard disk. Start->Run->dfrg.msc (it's buried somewhere on the Start Menu too). The defragmenter in Windows XP is crap so you'll have to do it a good few times for it to do anything useful (you should be seeing big solid blue bars on the chart). If you're using Vista, it has some form of automatic defragmenter but I don't know if it's any good.

dulpit

One thing, make sure that what you clear out of your startup list is ok (i.e. be careful, some things are needed)

I use this site to help me...

PogMoThoin

dulpit wrote: »

One thing, make sure that what you clear out of your startup list is ok (i.e. be careful, some things are needed)

I use this site to help me...

Or get a program called startup inspector, it googles them for you and advises

Mr.Nice Guy

Hello all,

I've been having similar problems as the OP and figured I'd post about it here rather than start a new thread. I've followed the steps advised on this thread but still having difficulty. I'm using a Windows XP which is a few years old.

Basically I'm finding my PC to be functioning OK for about maybe 45 minutes or so but then it will become REALLY slow and sometimes stop working altogether. When this happens I'll usually hit ctrl+alt+del and end the program but this won't do anything about the speed of the computer which remains at a snail's pace. I've scanned for viruses and found none. I've noticed my computer will become really noisy while all this is happening which made me wonder if it might be a problem with overheating?

According to my hard drive I have 6GB free. This is after a disk clean-up.

I'm not very knowledgeable about computers but from hitting ctrl+alt+del and checking the CPU usage and Mem usage I've discovered that 'wmplayer.exe' has a CPU reading which fluctuates about and is usually in the high nineties and has a 'Mem usage' which also fluctuates wildly and sometimes goes up to 140,000K +. Is this normal does anyone know? Could this maybe be the reason as it's far higher than 'iexplore.exe' which is the next highest for Mem usage at 23,396K.

Sorry if this comes across as muddled but as I say I'm not too good with this kind of thing. Hope someone can offer up suggestions about what might be the problem. Cheers.

zilog_jones

Media Player using 140MB+ of memory is not good. Is it doing anything in particular? Maybe it's broken. I don't know what's normal for it as I don't use it.

How much RAM do you have? Once your memory usage ("PF Usage" graph in Task Manager) goes above the amount of RAM you have, things will unavoidably go really slow. If you only have 256MB RAM, this may happen regularly depending on what software you run and how much you run at the same time. I'd recommend at least 512MB for Windows XP.

Mr.Nice Guy

zilog_jones wrote: »

Media Player using 140MB+ of memory is not good. Is it doing anything in particular? Maybe it's broken. I don't know what's normal for it as I don't use it.

How much RAM do you have? Once your memory usage ("PF Usage" graph in Task Manager) goes above the amount of RAM you have, things will unavoidably go really slow. If you only have 256MB RAM, this may happen regularly depending on what software you run and how much you run at the same time. I'd recommend at least 512MB for Windows XP.

Yeah I've been browsing some other sites and that doesn't seem to be healthy activity for WMP at all. In fact about an hour ago it went past 140+ and into 200+. I was just listening to an interview at the time and it started skipping and eventually ceased responding altogether. Often I have it idle in the background but that seems to be a problem. I've not got it on at the minute. It is 256MB of RAM that I've got.

Dos anyone have any thoguhts on what I should do about this?

dulpit

Perhaps use a different media player? I personally use Winamp, doesn't seem to hog resources here...

zilog_jones

Check you have the most up-to-date version for Media Player and Windows (easiest way would be www.update.microsoft.com). Beyond that I don't know as I don't use WMP (I use Foobar2000 for music).