Comp slow to switch between programs etc

neris

One of my desktops is very slow to open up programmes or switch from one programme to another (i:e click on word while internets open and im waiting ages). I have removed a alot of unnecessary programmes like skype and windows live but still no change. Is there some way of speeding this up or would uninstalling windows and reinstalling make it any better.

chin_grin

Can you post your specs?

Download and run this.

http://www.piriform.com/speccy

Then up the top left save the information as .txt open it up and post the information here.(Not all of it just the top few lines).

You may need to defrag and clean your machine up a bit more before getting it back ship shape.

I'm biased for Piriforms products but they do work.

The likes of Defraggler and CCleaner are great.

With ccleaner you can remove unnecessary files at startup and clean up the registry as well as deleting temp files from your system.

5uspect

How much memory is being used by the system. You're not trying to run XP on some old ****ty P4 Dell box with 512MB of RAM or anything are you?

Uninstalling programs won't help. You just have to stop them running or add more RAM. Or fix the one that's eating all your memory.

bonzodog2

5uspect wrote: »

How much memory is being used by the system. You're not trying to run XP on some old ****ty P4 Dell box with 512MB of RAM or anything are you?

Uninstalling programs won't help. You just have to stop them running or add more RAM. Or fix the one that's eating all your memory.

I'm (not the OP) running XP on a 1GHz P3 Dell laptop with 512MB of RAM, and it works just fine. And it spends > half its time doing Folding@Home

5uspect

And does it spend the rest of the time doing noting just fine?

A default installation of XP uses about 250 to 300MB of RAM just to run unless you do come serious tweaking to it to get it down to about 100MB. Open M$ Office and a web browser and you'll be digging into page file in no time.

neris

Just discovered that the comp only has 224mb of RAM which seems very small so Im suspecting that the problem and the comp isnt worth crap.

yoyo

neris wrote: »

Just discovered that the comp only has 224mb of RAM which seems very small so Im suspecting that the problem and the comp isnt worth crap.

XP needs at least 1gig of RAM to be useable for everyday use, and I say at least, more would be better. The reason is most apps now adays use more memory, and as a result things start going slow. my firefox is currently using 440Megabytes RAM alone at present, double the amount you have.
What is the spec of the machine? If its a Celeron its probably not worth upgrading, if its a Pentium 4 I would consider it, www.memoryc.ie are quite good for memory, make sure to choose the right type (write back here if you need help finding this out)

Nick

neris

the machine has Intel Celeron CPU on it. Ive looked at the memory on that site for memoryc.ie and they have some very high memory but unsure if theyd work on my comp. What is DDR Ram and SDRam. I supose the higher the better mb to get

5uspect

Bear in mind that your motherboard will have a limit as to how much RAM it can see. It's probably capped at 1gig. Crucial.com have a good tool to figure out what you need.

neris

crucial.com is saying 3GB which suits fine but more would have been nicer. Do the pin numbers make a further issue? most RAMs in online stores have 240pins

5uspect

Yes, you can only put one type of RAM into the slots on your motherboard. The crucial test should tell you which sticks are compatible. 3gig is probably over kill. 1 to 1.5 gigs is loads for what you want.

neris

Cheers for the advice with my problem. got two 1mb RAMs this morning and evrythings working alot quicker and better

5uspect

Good stuff!