New Computer Help

[mxer7734]

I have currently 42 processes running and I'm not sure where to find the amount of RAM being used. Also I have only a little over 1GB of free space.

[Nomad84]

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Thanks for the correction nomad... you're correct. My eyes must have been playing tricks on me.

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NP.

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BTW, here's the specs on the apple displays:

20in: 1680x1050
23in: 1920x1200
30in: 2560x1600

...

The 30in should be big enough to do SIX games without overlap, if they're all 800x600.

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That's big [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] You could even do 9 tables with less than 50 pixels of vertical overlap.

[mxer7734]

Just defragged and I actually LOST free space, I also did a system cleanup and it didn't really change much. Does defragging multiple times hurt your PC because I am going to delete some files so I have enough free space to get the complete defrag. Does this hurt to do it multiple times?

[CORed]

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I have currently 42 processes running and I'm not sure where to find the amount of RAM being used. Also I have only a little over 1GB of free space.

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Wow. You've managed to fill up 79 GB of HD space. The lack of free space may be part of your problem, though I think adware/spyware may have more to do with it. I don't think you need a new computer, but you should either do a massive HD cleanup, deleting stuff you don't need, or, if you can't bare to part with anything, get another HD. You could get an external, but I think you'd be better off just to install a second HD in your PC, and move your music and othe data files onto it. More free space would allow you to properly defrag. Also, NTFS filesystems can get hosed if you fill them up completely, co be careful.

[tigerite]

I'd also recommend using Partition Magic to split it up into separate drives

You can run defrag all you want. 40 processes isn't outrageous, but it could be better (I have 16 processes running right now, with just firefox and ms antispyware open).

With window xp, do this to get an idea as to how much ram is being used:

- right click on taskbar
- Task Manager
- click on the Performance tab
- the second graph is called "PF Usage" (or something). Tell me what that value is.

[mxer7734]

Oh I see now...525 MB

Well, that's the problem! You're using more ram that you physically have available. So, your system is using your extra hard disk space as "virtual memory". This is especially bad because you don't have any disk space left on your drive. The swap file is fragmented, and possibly filling your drive completely up at times.

There's a lot you can do to fix it. Basically, you need to free up disk space and you need to figure out what programs are hogging all of your ram.

First of all, free up as much disk space as possible. You need to have 15% of the drive free in order for defrag to be effective. Uninstall as many programs as you can. This will save disk space and hopefully get rid of some of those programs that are running in the background hogging disk space. Reboot.

No, go to the task manager and see how many processes you have running and how much ram is in use. If it's less than before, then you've made progress. Ideally, you shouldn't be using more than 200MB of ram on a clean boot (be sure to check these numbers with no program running, like firefox, etc).

Now, click on the "Processes" tab in the task manager and sort them by Mem Usage. What processes are using the most ram? Go ahead and tell me the names of the top 5 processes.

Now, try to right click on every program in the system tray, and exit each one. Go back to the Task Manager and see if it freed up any ram (and how many processes you have running now). Was it significant? If so, then you'll have to consider uninstalling whatever you have running down there.

If you're still using a lot of ram, download this:
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

Install it, then go to your Control Panels and open up the net Startup control panel. Disable everything (yeah, everything). Reboot. Go back to the Task Manager and see how much ram is in use, and how many processes are running. Most likely you'll see a big change here... if that's the case, go back into the Startup control panel and only reenable those things that you really need, one by one.

Run defrag. It's important to run defrag after you've already uninstalled everything (and freed up ram) so that it is most effective.

Anyways, if you need help with any of this, let me know... I can login to your computer remotely and try to figure out exactly what the problem is, if you have any trouble. Just send me a PM and I'll give you instructions on how to setup remote access.

[mxer7734]

Well I found out one problem, when I gave you the amount of RAM that was being used I had 9 Internet Explorer's running and PT. I shut all these down, rebooted, and starting cleaning up my files. I deleted as many unessesary files as I needed to get the 15% free space to defrag. I ran defrag completely and rebooted again. My computer runs great, even with 9 Internet Explorers and PT running. Before It would freeze for a few seconds or make loud noises. Now everything works out. Thanks Again for all the help, If I need anything in the future I will just send you a PM. Once again Thank you!

Great!! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]