OK I could clear mountains of crap off my computer and I am sure it would work much faster, but I am sort of more interested in understanding a little of what is going on under the hood. I have a 3 yo laptop (xp, 2 GHz, 1 GB ram, 60 GB HD about 70 % full). If I come to the computer after doing something else or installing a new program then windows explorer can take ages (30 s) to load up a new window, the worst offender is the start/all programmes window.
Now OK there may be 100 programmes to display in this window, but the processor moniter shows the processor is only idling along at 5% - why cant it free up more cycles to get my windows open faster? Is the rate limiting step disc access?
If I try and open it up again straight after, then it pops up immediately with no delay. Something to do with page file swapping or something else?
I should say that the computer is not slow when running a game or video processing. It just seems to me that windows explorer is poorly designed, which sucks as it often determines your experience when using your computer
You don’t have nearly enough memory to be running that many programs at once without slow downs.
What’s happening is that your computer runs out of memory. so it starts swapping it out, starting with the least used. Explorer is then having to take that memory back, swapping the new program from disk. So, yeah:page file swapping.
In other words, your bottleneck is not the processor but your disk. Getting more memory would help, as would not running so many programs at once. (Or maybe getting a solid state drive.) Explorer is not designed to somehow be privileged and never be swapped out. As far as Windows is concerned, it’s just another program.
I think the OP is talking about the list of programs displayed via the start button (which is “really” an explorer folder). He (or she) is not running lots of programs simultaneously, he just wants to see all the shortcut icons in the folder displayed, and it can take a long time. I have the same issue, and I agree it is annoying and seems unnecessary.
Gbro,
Your system has 256 MB of RAM, and at the time you checked, you had 82 MB completely empty and 80 MB of RAM devoted to cache.
That’s actually pretty good as far as free RAM goes.
In your case, I’d try creating an additional user account on the machine, logging in with it and seeing if you got better results. It could be the profile getting hosed up. Uncommon, but it happens.
Beyond that, I’d look at malware/virus issues per the advice of the one sticky on this board.
Finally, I’d decide you had registry bloat or some other stupidity, and suggests a reinstall of Windows.
On edit:
PS- For God’s sake, if that’s a desktop machine, get more RAM. You could double a desktop machine’s RAM for $20.
Er uh…you think your machine has 1GB of RAM, so that must have been the original specs. But taskmanager only sees 256MB of RAM so it would appear that you are missing 3/4 of your original RAM. It has either gone bad, gotten removed or is unseated, or you were mistaken with your original assumption.
While the minimum requirements to run XP was originally 128MB of RAM, that was before any service packs…and presumably with nothing else on your system
Go to www.crucial.com and plug in your laptop’s information and find out how much RAM you can put in there and what kind. Then buy enough to max out your machine. Just replace everything that is in there. You can find instructions on how to switch the RAM out on the laptop manufacturer’s Web site.
Thanks but it is an old Twinhead laptop.
My desktop is locked up with malware or some such garbage. A friend of mine is going to some day come over and clean it up with a boot disc of some kind.
When I see the CPU usage % on the bottom of the task manager it is bouncing from 2% to 90% almost every time I look at it and am doing nothing but surfing the web with firefox.
Its frustrating when the pecking of keys that I do is 15 strokes ahead of what is showing on the screen:(
I had my SIL reload windows into this thing and its slower now than before:smack:
1 GB of RAM is at the very low end for running any modern version of Windows. Even three years ago, 2 GB was the standard. Most desktops these days have 3-4, depending on which version of Windows they have (some versions can’t address 4 GB).
A valid observation, but not relevant without knowing other factors.
We need to get a handle on the actual memory behavior of this system and the apps he’s running before experiencing this issue.
You can remove most malware most of the time pretty easily by yourself. There are legion of free programs out there, FWIW, I use Malwarebytes and Avast, but there are many others.
ive recently had to clean more than a few computers of some malware / trojans. mostly the redirect / advertisement variety. they would block access to installs of antivirus / antimalware unless i renamed the file, lol. heres a GREAT link to completely free a system of malware/trojans/spyware without losing information.
if you follow the instructions you should have a clean computer in 3-8 hours, then you would (re)install an antivirus to protect from future infections… i read awhile back that it only takes 17 minutes for a computer to be infected after being plugged into the internet from fresh windows install (without antivirus).
some good free antivirus that i use are Avira , and AVG (avg takes more resources but its harder for users to disable… which can be a good thing) both of which can be found on download.cnet.com or other reputable download sites.
another program ive found to help on low spec systems is called gamebooster (i just use the free version, not sure how good the pay one is.) it will turn off all “unnecessary process”
