I visited my mother in law over the past week or so. She asked me to look at her computer, as she hadn’t been able to check her email on it for a while. I fixed that problem for her, but in doing so, discovered that her computer runs everything extremely slowly. What I mean is, for example, if I open up a browser window (or any window for any application) I will need to sit there for at least thirty seconds, if not a couple of minutes, waiting for the window (not the page, mind you, the window) to finish loading up.
I defragged a couple of times, and that seemed (I think) to help a little. I also ran ad-aware. Ad-aware found a couple of bits of spyware, and I removed them. This, too, seemed to help a little. But it never really did start running applications at any acceptable speed.
Her system (from memory) was a Pentium III, running Windows ME, with 64MB of RAM. I don’t remember the speed of the Pentium chip. I was wondering if it might just be a case of too little RAM. I do know that this computer was once able to run Internet Explorer at a normal speed. But I also know that a friend of my brother in law (the son of the mother in law in question) once offered to help her improve on her system, and physically opened her system up and tinkered around inside it, and never explained to her what he was in fact doing. I am wondering whether he might not have actually pulled out 64MB of RAM from a 128MB machine, pretending to “help” her. (I unfortunately believe myself to have reasons not to eliminate this possibility when considering the person in question.)
So what I’m wondering is, Is it normal for a PIII WinME machine to have 64MB of RAM?
Barring the unfortunate possibility of theft, what else might be causing the kind of problem I’ve described?
Does she still have the receipt of purchase? That might tell you how much RAM was originally installed. A PIII with only 64MB RAM would surprise me, but anything’s possible.
Upgrading her RAM would probably be a big help, but I’d consider a format and reinstall of Windows too, based on the spyware. AdAware is good but it doesn’t always get rid of everything, and some spyware seems to leave residual damage to the system. Also, I just have a burning hatred for Windows ME so I’d do whatever it took to get a different version of Windows installed. I notice the minimum system requirements for ME are 32MB RAM (XP requires 128MB).
Are you sure it’s a PIII? I would expect a PIII to have at least 128 MB of RAM and would be running Win2k. A PII with 64 MB running ME would be more common. Of course, it’s possible that someone put together an el-cheapo PIII with limited memory and an older OS, so I wouldnt’ say for certain that someone mucked with it.
I don’t like ME either. ME is a buggy piece of junk that was shoved out the door way too fast just so Microsoft had something to sell. I’d recommend putting 2000 or XP on it if your MIL is using it for mostly net and email types of things. You’ll need to bump the RAM up to 128 MB (or more) before you do this though.
ME is basically Windows 98 with a few minor tweaks. It will run just fine on 32 MB of RAM. 64 MB should be no problem for it. If it’s running as dog slow as you say it is, then it’s got something seriously wrong with it. Adding more RAM probably isn’t going to diddley. For it to go that slow, it’s not just running out of RAM. It’s got something seriously hosed. Unfortunately, your quickest way out of this is probably to just wipe the disk and start over. Spyware/malware is just too nasty and too hard to dig out these days. You can spend days and days trying to clean things up and still not get it all.
I have a machine at work that’s a Pentium Pro 200 with 64 Meg of RAM, running NT 4. It’s a '96 vintage, still runs fine for what I want (any posts I make here during work are made on it). Email with .pdf attachments kill it, but it’s not bad surfing.
I was watching Home Improvement the other day and a kid was bragging to Randy I believe that this was the size of his RAM in a laptop so it seems it is a while ago.
I think back then, there was a great RAM price hike due to an earthquake in Taiwan and many of the big box manufacturers were notorious in advertising highly clocked processes with meagre amounts of RAM because many people only looked at Mhz. If it’s a Dell or Gateway or something similar, I wouldn’t be surprised if it only came with 64Mb of RAM.
FWIW, at work I have an Athlon 2700+ machine with just 128MB RAM, running on Windows XP. Originally it had 256MB but one DIMM got busted and I removed it.
I only use that computer for opening an Access database application and internet browsing. I have disabled all visual effects (for example, the taskbar looks like Windows 2000) and the computer runs exceptionally well.
So yes, 64MB on a P3 wouldn’t surprise me. Remove source-hogging Windows ME and install Windows 98SE with all Microsoft updates and the machine will operate perfectly for your basic household needs.
64 MB should be just fine for ME. What programs are loaded at startup? There’s probably a heap of unnecessary crud (sorry, helper apps) in there.
Look at the disk activity light: if it’s on a lot, that indicates that the machine is swapping a lot. You can also check this with the System Monitor utility.
Another thing to check is the speed setting in the BIOS. Is the CPU speed set to ‘Compatible’ (or similar) perchance? Has someone tried to overclock it?
I think *NIX would be risky for this poster as the machine belongs to his/her mother in law.
Chances are she has been shoving in CDs from all over the place, downloading from spurious sites and her ‘expert’ friends have been showing her clever things.
I forgot to mention about the running processes. I hit ctrl-alt-delete, and got a list of running programs, but no way to look at processes. Under the list of programs, there were just maybe five listed, and two or three of them were unnecessary. I now forget how I did it, but I caused these not to run on startup anymore.
But I never did find a way to look at any more comprehensive list of processes run on startup, so its very possible that’s where the problem continues to lie.* I also never found a way to check on memory usage in WinME.
Thanks for the suggestions and ideas. I really think she ought to just buy a new two or three hundred dollar computer.
ME should run OK on 64 megs. Due to architectural limitations 98 and ME really can’t make effective OS use of RAM much beyond 128 or 256 megs. Adding RAM beyond that can actually slow a 98 or ME system down.
Most of the time super slowdowns are caused by malware hijackers or maybe some flavor of Norton’s.
The only time I ran into a super slowdown that a regular cleanup couldn’t fix was in two scenarios:
1: When the guy’s wife installed a hidden key-logger to monitor his browsing (and she’s the one who brought the PC to me to “fix it”!)It hammered system responsiveness.
2: There was a real nasty boot level hijacking malware virus that regular malware & virus scanners could not detect.
No, you were correct. “Lay” is either the past tense of “lie,” which isn’t what you mean if the problem continues, or it’s the present tense of a transitive verb—that is, you can’t just lay, you have to lay something.
By the way, if the question had been “When was 64KB RAM current?” the answer would have been “In the heyday of the Commodore 64.”
actually I originally read the subject as 64kb rather than 64mb
@Frylock, getting her a new machine might be a solution, they are so cheap nowadays. However for what she needs it would be Ok trashing ME and installing Win98.
Working on such machines is generally a thankless task
Even if you don’t know the CPU, it’s pretty hard to hide the CPU from the OS reports…plus anything other than an old P3 won’t even fit in the MB slot…new P3’s are very different physically from other CPUs…
(I know, as I have a P1 166, a Cyrex 166, a AMI 133, a P2 350, a P3 450, and **P3 500 **and they are all obviously different)
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