lately, especially when i try to run AOL along with another program, such as windows media player or kazaa (i mean… umm… something legal… c’mon… i just said it in passing, okay?) my computer has been getting really slow or will start freezing up, one program at a time, usually starting with AOL. anyways, the other day, i was looking at the “performance” section of task manager, just out of curiosity, and noticed my PF usage was really high and my CPU was at 100%. bear in mind, i really don’t know what either of these are; but, after some reading in task manager’s help section, i learned that you can change your PF settings to allow for more activity. the only problem is, the article didn’t say how. any suggestions on things i could do to prevent my computer from freezing up so much (other than avoiding running 2 programs at once? that’s just a little ridiculous, and my computer used to be able to take it.
What is your operating system?
While I’m not quite of the technical proficiency to give you a magic bullet to fix your problems, I’d recommend this guide (assuming your using XP ) . You don’t necessarily have to re-format your comp to follow along with it. It goes along a series of steps to stop background programs from running at startup, freeing up memory, and it does eventually get to setting up PF/virtual memory a few pages in.
What, exactly are your computer specs, though? Even a old, outdated comp nowadays should be able to handle Kazaa and AOL.
He’s almost certainly on XP if he’s talking about PF usage and CPU percentage (either that or 2000, but not many home users on 2000 I expect)
And re: performance. the reason I am posting is because I too have noticed a lot of ‘activity’ (specifically frantic hard disk reading) and mines a 3GHZ pentium 4 with 1 GB of ram.
I suspect I just need to defrag. You could try that too.
(Start Menu->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Disk Defragmenter)
I am not saying that is the solution, but it’s worth having a go.
What are the specs of your computer? Like what type and speed of processor, how much RAM, and what operating system (we’re assuming WinXP?) Do you have 100% CPU usage constantly, or does it only peak to 100% occasionally, or when you’re doing specific activities? Do you have a ton of things running in your system tray? Do you have high PF usage only when KaZaa is open, or always?
I don’t have XP, but assuming Task Manager is pretty much the same as in Windows 2000, look at the Processes tab. It should tell you which process(es), other than ‘System Idle process’, is hogging the CPU (look in the ‘CPU’ column). If the name of the guilty process doesn’t mean anything to you, Google it or post it here, someone will know what it is.
Please don’t do this.
No matter what ANYONE tells you, you cannot manage a pagefile better than Windows can. If you don’t believe me, go to the Ars Technica forums and search for “pagefile” and see how many “leave it alone” answers you get.
Not only sould you check your CPU percentage, you should also check memory usage (that’s physical memory usage, not the pagefile). Sounds like one of the apps - AOL, anyone? - has a memory leak or it otherwise acting wonky.
The problem isn’t your page file usage, that’s just a symptom. The problem is that something is eating up gobs of memory. It’s using up all of the available RAM which is forcing you to hit your page file very hard. Mucking with the page file won’t help. Increasing the RAM in your computer will help a bit, but you’re only delaying the inevitable. Whatever is eating up all of the RAM will eventually eat up all of the extra RAM too and you’ll be right back where you started.
What you really need to do is figure out who’s gobbling up all the resources on your computer. Those (ahem) certain unmentionable programs (cough cough kazaa cough cough) are often riddled with spyware and viruses. A good anti-virus and things like adaware and spybot might help.
If you bring up the task manager, you can look here to see what’s running on your computer:
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm
I suspect you’ll find a bunch of things in there that don’t belong.
Seconded.
I did this once. Gave the comp way more virtual memory than I thought windows was using. Windows threw a wobbler. I can’t rembember how I recovered it.
Unless you have a really old, underpowered computer, I agree that your problem almost certainly is a virus or spyware. I help my daughter’s riding coach with her computer, and she had this exact problem - and it was spyware. Look at the task manager, and see if it improves if you kill the #1 CPU munching job. Note the name of the process, and go to an antivirus site to look it up. They have scripts to remove some of these.
Basically, no app you are running should take up 100% of a modern CPU - and there is even less chance of page faults being a legitimate problem.
Defragging won’t hurt, but don’t bother until you do some other things.
Your antivirus definitions are up to date and everything, right? If you can load new definitions, try that. Some of the viruses prevent the AV programs from working, so that is another symptom.