Computer slows down after installing software

biologikal

I've a new XP install one of my PCs, fairly barebones, XP up-to-date, avast up to date, some video players like VLC and Real Alternative, Opera, Foxit, Maxblast, Windows Defender, and a few other small progams. Made a snapshot of this with Maxblast, so I can revert back to a nice clean install in minutes if necessary.

Anyway, I installed OpenOffice and Firefox last night, and everything slowed down considerably, like moving between folders in Explorer, it takes a few seconds for the folder to refresh, or bringing an application into focus, and I can see it stalling for a few seconds before I can gain control of that application. This was happening even when Firefox and OpenOffice weren't running (I also disabled some OpenOffice quick startup thing).

PC is a P4 2.4, I think, (with 384MB 2100 DDR), and a Geforce2 MX400 graphics card, hardly cutting edge, but runs well for what I need it for.

Went back to the snapshot, and everything is working great again.

What could be the reason for the sudden sluggishness? Are either Firefox or OpenOffice known to hog resources, even when they're not running? I would have thought the spec was up to running these program without any problem. I'd been trying out Firefox, and was thinking maybe some malware had gotten in, but I was under the impression Firefox was one of the more secure browsers.

Cuddlesworth

Firefox is a ram hog, you have very little of it. I would believe the sluggishness would be the system constantly paging to the hard-drive. Tbh I have no idea how you managed to survive on that amount of ram this long. 512mbs would be the very minimum I would run a up to date xp client on.

PogMoThoin

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Firefox is a ram hog, you have very little of it. I would believe the sluggishness would be the system constantly paging to the hard-drive. Tbh I have no idea how you managed to survive on that amount of ram this long. 512mbs would be the very minimum I would run a up to date xp client on.

+1
Get more ram m8

biologikal

Cheers, didn't realise Firefox was a RAM hog. Might stick with Opera, it's a lot quicker at loading up and switching tabs than Firefox. PC works fine as it is, even when I had MS Office on a previous installation, but maybe it's tethering on the brink of falling down, especially if I was to add any serious software.

Haven't had the PC long, was a throw-away from work (a GX260), so it came as is. Might see if I can get my hands on a 1GB stick, beef it up a bit.

What's the recommendation on page files? It's currenly custom size, min 576, max 1152 - I recall making it static at about 1.5 times the RAM in older PCs with Win2000. What would be the recommendation for this PC? Static at 576MB?

Snowbat

Memory management is much improved in Firefox 3.0. This test shows Firefox 3.0 exhibits lower memory usage than Safari 3.1, Flock (based on Firefox 2.0), Opera 9.5, and Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1. Memory management was a big target during 3.0 development.

Overheal

Yeah that machine is really getting too old for the internet mate. Reformatted an old 512MB Pentium III machine back in june, but as soon as I launched AVG Free on it, that about did it.

Dartz

You might want to try switching OS... instead of using Windows. One thing that really slows a PC down is using an Antivirus... especially some of the newer ones. Switch to a lightweight Linux Distro... Xubuntu maybe...

I have the same running on a 192MB RAM, Pentium III laptop.... that's less RAM than the recommended requirements... and it works just fine. Only problem is Flashplayer reading off Youtube causing the thing to run out of memory... because it cant swap out what it's playing... so it just locks up.

Which I blame Youtube itself for... their videos seem to have tripled in size... Two years ago... it took about a minute on diallup to load maybe 20 seconds of a video.... depending. Recently with a broadband connection (That is pretty quick for everything else), it's taking the exact same...

biologikal

+1 about AVG - I'd been using it for years (the free one), but then tried v8 a few months back, and system was grinding away at the hard drives. avast is less demanding, but seems to be doing as well as AVG ever did.

Have experimented a little with other OS's, but a few of the applications I need are only on Windows, and I use O2 mobile BB, so I'm kinda stuck with XP for now. Of any other OS's I've used, Knoppix is probably the easiest to use, but I suppose it's all a matter of getting used to where things are and what they do.

I don't think the PC is ready for recycling just yet; I have had HL2:EP2 running on it without any bother, and since I'm not into gaming, it should be fine for most stuff I need, office, internet, basic image processing, watching video.

Find it hard to believe that Firefox3 uses less memory than Opera9.5, which is what I'm using for the past year or so. Even with just the one tab open in Firefox, I could notice the slowing down, whereas with Opera, I've had upwards of 15-20 tabs, and not a hiccup out of it, no joke. But yes, RAM is low, bring it up to 512 at least might make everything run that more smoothly, so I'll see about getting a 1GB stick, get another couple of years out of it.

Thanks all for the input.

PogMoThoin

Forget any other OS, I presume You have a licence for Xp with this pc, its already installed and running, so why not make it useable, what you need is ram which is dirt cheap ATM. 512MB would take you out of trouble. Use cpuz to determine what ram is in the pc, what slots they occupy and whether there are empty slots.