basic advice

[colly]

Firefox is up to date.

Physical memory Total is 458028
Available 74205
System Cache 222224

PF usage stands at 331 Mb

IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers both primary and secondary say 'DMA if available'

All of which means Jack shoot to me.

Having taken up your very helpful suggestions the thing is running faster and when I rebooted it came up very much faster. I only had time to make tea before it was ready so something has changed for the better.

As for the age of it ? Ah well.........as I recall the last time it was upgraded would be 4 maybe 5 years ago.

Bonj I don't have the original discs but all my Anti virus and spyware detector stuff is up to date. I installed Avast earlier this year and that did clear out a good few problems for me and I keep it up to date and switched on.

Accountantpete I installed the program you suggested but have not run it yet.

Pages load right away now and not piecemeal either.

I'm not complete dummy with computers but anything other than the obvious throws me off right away.

 

[SavageHoutkop]

Whenever I do stuff on someone else's PC I normally climb the walls waiting for things to open / start.

99% of the time it's nothing to do with virus/malware or the PC being too old, normally it's just that too much stuff is starting.

If booting is slow, Fossy's fix (msconfig) is a good one. It should also clear some of the crud that runs continually in the background that you don't need. Which is surprisingly much. (Like, for instance, if you install Nero - which is a CD burning app - and you don't specifically tell it not to, it automatically installs about 5 other applications, one of which keeps waiting for you to insert 'media' with photos on it, at which point Nero's photo application will open. That's just a system hog that one is).

If it is running fine after that msconfig fix, most of the time, and then occasionally goes slowly, it's probably something hogging the system. This can sometimes be a program getting itself confused, or sometimes a program you're not actually using at the moment deciding now is a brilliant time to scan your system (antivirus) or download its new update (almost anything else).

This is where TwoWheelsGood's suggestion that you press cntrl-alt-del is a good one. If something's using consistently over about 30% of your CPU it's probably 'stuck'. Post back with the name and let us know.

Finally, occasionally, Windows just gets too big for its own good. So as a last resort if the msconfig and / or the cntrl-alt-delete don't help enough a complete wipe might be needed, but that's quite painful.

Also I see you were asked how much memory you had but I can't see the answer..? TwoWheels seems to think you said 118Mb? If the way peanut is suggesting doesn't work, if you cntrl-alt-delete and click on the 'performance' tab it'll show you down the bottom right 'physical memory (k)' 'total'.

 

[SavageHoutkop]

I did and that's it. Also on my home PC's x2.

 

[SavageHoutkop]

Ah, you posted while I was posting

That is a little RAM. It might be worth trying to upgrade that if possible....

 

[colly]

Ah, you posted while I was posting

That is a little RAM. It might be worth trying to upgrade that if possible....

HUH! Well I have never had any complaints thank you very much!!


Seriously, the cpu usage with just Firefox going and one tab open is between 1% and 3%. It varies.

 

[fossyant]

Try and upgrade to about 2gb with XP.

An easy way to check what you need is from Crucial's web site - they have a memory checker that will give you everything you need - i.e. how much ram you can fit, and the type and speed.

Don't buy from them - use ebuyer for some - it's dead cheap now anyway.

My bro's PC, and in-laws, started slowing down - had previously been quick, but once XP started being patched by MS, it got slower and slower. Shoving in a stack more memory helped loads.

 

[Bromptonaut]

Start Run

Type in MSCONFIG. - Look at startup and see what programmes are running when you start.

Uncheck any that don't need

Fossy,

Thanks for the reminder. I'm having a similar problem to the OP and I'd forgotten the msconfig command. Removed a whole load of quicktime/i-player/i-tunes etc stuff and I now have a happy lappy!!.

 

[Bromptonaut]

Also agree that in terms of "bangs per buck" adding memory is the winner!

 

[rh100]

This works on XP Pro, not sure about Home edition

click start>control panel>administrative tools>performance

As I understand it, this will give a real time graph with three counters, which will point to where the problem lies. One line is for CPU usage, another for the amount of data waiting to be written to the hard disk and another for the virtual memory. They should peak and trough , but not stay high all the time. The hard disk one is hard to track sometimes.

Also, right click drive C: then properties, check the hard disk is not showing full, and also click cleanup next to the pie chart, it will scan the drive and present a list of items and the amount of data it takes. click all that you are happy to clear, except for compress old files as this just saves a bit of space at the cost of being slower to access those files.

Also, if the disk is churning all the time, firstly power down and check the hard drive cables are seated firmly if you are comfortable doing this. Then, when back in windows, right click C; select properties>then tools tab and check now under error checking, tick both boxes and start. It will probably give an error and ask if you want it scheduled to run on reboot. This will check for and repair bad sectors on the drive and can take an hour or so to run, but beware, this could FINISH OFF YOUR HARD DISK if it's on its way out already, so make sure you are backed up in some way, not for the faint hearted :-)

Memory upgrades really help, but only if any underlying problems are sorted out first. 512MB is ok, 1 or 2 gig is best, 256mb is a waste of time. What processor do you have?

Also check your virtual memory settings, it should be system managed. If you want it static, then set it to minimum 1.5 x the amount of RAM and maximum 3 x the amount of RAM.

Regards

 

[colly]

Many thanks for the advice from all of you.

I have done a lot of what's been suggested, well that which I was able to and confident enough to do, and things have improved greatly.

Sadly I seem to have lost the audio somehow.
Never mind I will bugger about with it tomorrow when I am having some tea.

 

[ian turner]

With the atapi controller its what it says its doing for that channel (as in UDMA 2 or UDMA 5 for dvd drives/harddrives and definitely not PIO) rather than whether it should be using UDMA according to the tick box as it might not be.
Originally 256mb was the minimum for XP but post sp2 its more like 512MB and with the graphics chipset sharing the main memory rather than having its own you are starting off with less than that.
If you're going to buy more memory then it would be an idea to check the number of sodimms currently installed (remove the section in the base that contains the memory) as chances are it will be 2x256mb so adding another 512mb would just give you 768mb as you would have to remove 256mb to fit it . I'd suggest upgrading to 1GB and buy off crucial as that means you're buying ram they claim will run with your system so gives you some comeback.
The harddrive isn't full and if it was then your system would be so slow it would be unusable.
As to the audio if you unticked stuff in startup in msconfig try reticking them one at a time especially if its called something like realtek (if you unticked anything in the services section then definitely put it back) and see if the audio comes back.

 

[colly]

Sound back on

Nothing to do with me, re-appeared all by itself.