Computer bogging down...what to do?

Factual Questions
1

I need your help. I have a 2001 Dell running Windows ME with 128 MB of RAM and it seems to be running at slower and slower speed during regular applications over time. I am unsure what to do in order to solve this problem. It’s definitely slower yet I have tons of unused hard drive. I also have my computer set up on a schedule for maintenance tasks such as Defrag, ScanDisk and Disk Clean Up. I also keep my Virus Protection up to date so I don’t imagine that’s the problem.

What should I use to check my internal speed or usage? How can this be fixed?

2

I’m sure someone more proficient will come along, I’ll throw a few things at you:

Do a ctrl-alt-del and check to see what’s running. There may be a bunch of programs you don’t need. Go to this site and it will explain nearly every program you are likely to find. Get rid of stuff you don’t need.

Check your startup program list. You can go into msconfig and get rid of programs you don’t have to have in startup. If you do this and the computer goes wonky, you can always re-activate them.

I’ve done these two things and have decreased the problems I used to have.
YMMV, of course.

3

Windows ME is likely your problem. There is a serious memory hole in that little OS that only shows up with certain hardware/software combinations. Resetting often will help you, adding more RAM can delay the problem, and upgrading to XP (or “downgrading” to 98SE) will fix it.

4

With ME I use a registry defrag program like System Suite 2000. I also clean the registry too. That program has all these tools. Its kind of old, though.

5

I am no expert , but when I removed Mcafee anti virus program my computer was sorted and now runs as fast as new. Bob C

6

yes, WinMe is probably the worst OS M$ has ever made. buggy as hell. I would suggest a change in OS, although not to XP. with only 128mb of ram, XP is gonna run poorly on you’re machine (it’s a huge memory hog), go for either 98se or 2000. if that’s not practical, then, as stated before, rebooting often is pretty much all you can do about it, although you could try some of the various memory cleaners that are out there (worth a shot I suppose). also, Mr. Blue Sky, iirc WinMe doesn’t have a task manager, and all pressing ctrl-alt-del will do is reboot your comp.

on a somewhat urelated note (as I don’t believe the registry is your problem, but then again when your registry’s a mess, sometimes weird stuff happens), everybody should at least dl RegCleaner and do the automatic registry cleanings. that program does a pretty good job of keeping your registry clean.

7

I need to find a copy of 98, but noone I know of has one, so I’m stuck with ME (Heh… Stuck with me.) I have a computer (233Mhz) running RedHat Linux 8.1, retail $39.95, which is better than anything microsoft (not worthy of a capital m) has ever put out. It has never crashed and my ME is currently being slower on a 400Mhz machine. There is no comparison.

8

Hate to disagree, but pressing ctrl-alt-del DOES bring up the task manager, otherwise I wouldn’t have brought it up.

9

My mother’s computer is a Pentium II with 256 Mb of RAM, and it runs XP just fine. If you can get more RAM, go with XP-- it’s very stable.

10

Err, my mistake, Mom says she has 328 Mb. But RAM is cheap, isn’t it?

11
  1. Check for spyware with Spybot.
  2. Do a msconfig to see what’s running on your box after nuking all the spyware.