Computer is SOOOO slow!!

[GroundZero3]

It could be casued by memory leak. when you leave it on it tends to slow down. All you really need to is restart it. plus if you computer is really hot it slow down a bit. Do you have good fans in your comp?
Zer03

[daveleau]

You might want to try cooling the 7200 RPM hdd. Heat could be an issue there or from the CPU. If your BIOS and motherboard support temp cooling then check the temp. I second the question above.
How much RAM do you have? If it is a resource problem (RAM is eaten up as systems stay on and not easily reused under WIN9x w/o some sort of RAM optimizing program) then I would suggest either RamBooster (free) or MemTurbo ($20 shareware) that are both freely downloadable from here: http://download.cnet.com/ and easy to use.
Good luck. Hope this helps.
Dave

[Petros]

I have 64MB of PC-100 ram. And yes, GroundZero3, a reboot solves the problem. But I hear of people all the time leaving their systems on forever, and I want to know why I can't do that to mine.

[grandslammer]

Has your bios ever been flashed? Just curious, but VIA chipset, I'm "assuming" award bios?

There have been issues with AMD, you might want to check your bios version. As seen right when you start to boot. It will (should?) say name of bios (Award?) and the version.

Check the homepage for your motherboard manufacturer. See if they offer bios updates. They Should!

Hope this helps.

Mike P.

[This message has been edited by grandslammer (edited 01-06-2000).]

[grandslammer]

I have the latest "revision?" of award bios. If you want, I can e-mail it to you. If so, (and you've never done it before), you will need to follow my directions to the letter.

Mike P.

[This message has been edited by grandslammer (edited 01-05-2000).]

[Petros]

Here is my problem... Whenever I leave my computer on for an extended length of time (more than a day), it slows down tremendously. I also have winamp, and it skips like crazy when the computer is left on. What is the problem? Is there anything I can do to fix it?

Here is my system:

AMD K6-2 300
Mobo w/ via chipset (I don't know the manufacurer)
6.4GB Quantum HDD
13.5GB IBM Deskstar HDD 7200rpm
S3 Virge GX2 4MB vid card
4MB Matrox vid accelerator
Adaptec SCSI card
3com 56K modem
3com 10baseT ethernet card
34x cd drive
4416 yamaha cd writer
Zip drive

Thanks!

[Petros]

That'd be great if you would email the latest Award bios to me. I've never flashed a bios before, I've always been too chicken to try it (I do a fine job of messing things up in other ways http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif Thanks!!

[grandslammer]

okay Pete, hang on. I'm trying to get some more info before you use that flash, okay?

Mike

[Axel]

I just replied to GS in another post - you can't just use his flash unless you have EXACTLY the same motherboard with exactly the same chip set.

I think the other suggestions already posted hold the key to your issues. If you don't have a problem booting the system, typically, it isn't a BIOS thing causing the memory leak.

I have some additional questions for you which may bring the answer.

1) - does the hard drive get accessed more often the longer you leave your system up?
This would indicate that your RAM resources are used up with running program files.

2) - any chance you have damaged RAM?

As the next course of action - I'd check out this list of things on your system.

make a note of your system resources when you first start your computer. - wait 10 hours - make a note of your system resources after 10 hours of up time.

what's running on your system? - make a note of what's running in the task list (ctrl-alt-del) - give us a post of what's in there so we can help you identify it.

Update your virus definitions and do a sweep of your system to be sure a virus isn't writing itself all over your computer.

Do a scandisk and a defrag of your hard drive . This is to see what shape the drive is in and whether it has a good contiguous space to use for a swap file after your RAM is full.

what's in your windows start-up file - are you automatically loading things at start-up that you don't absolutely use each & every time you use the system?

All of these steps are free and should not cause your system any harm. But chances are you'll discover a problem in the course of going through this list.

GS - sorry if I came on a bit strong, but when people start talking about "exchanging" BIOS files, I see dead systems.

[Petros]

No problem take your time. Thanks so much for your help!!

[Nathan]

Have you tried turning off the Power Management features in both CMOS and in Control Panel/Power?

Let us know what's going on.

[grandslammer]

Hi all...

As my son would say "My Bad!"

But, I did say to hold off until I could verify compatibility in my e-mail, so I knew you wouldn't do it until we did that.

But, we did get suggestions as to how to identify your motherboard.

To disable startup items on your computer without removing them, click on start, then run. Type in MSCONFIG, and hit okay.
Select "selective startup." Then click on the startup tab. In this area, you can UNcheck any items you feel you don't need. When you've made your choices, just click on apply, then okay. Then restart your machine and the new settings will be in effect. Also, under selective setup, you can disable your autoexec.bat and config.sys. Windoze doesn't need either of them. This is mainly for dos apps, and loads before windoze does.

This way, if you decide you want them back, you haven't removed them from registry, you've simply "disabled" them...

See if that makes a difference. Sometimes we have a rediculous amount of programs start up when we load windoze. And they can eat up a lot of resources.

Thanks for waiting, you saved yourself a lot of aggrivation, and saved me a life of guilt!

Mike

PS, Pete, you CAN do what I've said in this reply, I've done it several times, and you don't have to worry about diong it. Swear...

Mike

HUGE thanx to Axel!

[This message has been edited by grandslammer (edited 01-06-2000).]

[Petros]

Thanks so much for your help everyone!! Axel, I'll go through your checklist when I get home from work and I'll let you know if it helps or not.

As for the questions, my hard drive does seem to be accessed more after the computer has been on for an extended length of time. I don't know if I have damaged RAM or not. When the computer boots, it seems to all check out ok. Is there any other way to tell if it is damaged? And someone asked before about a fixed size swap... mine is fixed at 150 mb

Thanks again all!

Pete

[Petros]

Ok, here is some more info. I realized that I have a ton of stuff that loads on startup and that obviously was the problem. So I tried to disable everything. Computer booted fine, resource meter showed 97% free. But I ran Rambooster to see how much physical memory was free and only 12 out of 64 was free! Is that normal? This led me to believe that maybe windows itself is my problem, But I haven't the faintest idea what could be eating up that much memory. I updated my norton antivirus files and the scan turned up clean. I also tried leaving my computer on for a day with everything running. At the start, rm reported 85% free. After a day of use, it was down to 77%. What is wrong here? Is it possible that I have some sort of virus? I hope to hell not!!!!!

[Underclocked]

85% is a bit low on startup, you should try to disable a few more startup items. Are you using that 3com NIC? If not, take it out. Being down to 77% after a day of use isn't bad at all in my experience.

[Prince]

1. Do you use MS Office? If so have you disabled Find Fast? It's a real b******
2. NAV doing background virus checks can slow systems down.
3. Certain programs like Crashguard, NU also tend to clog up the system.
4. Some non-MS screensavers slow systems down.
5. What about your power saving settings?

[Petros]

Prince, all those settings are already disabled... and I still have problems. I tried leaving my computer on for 2 straight days, it got so slow, that the clock didn't even update!! aaaahhhhh

[morgan]

forgive me for jumping in....
Have you defragged your hard drive?

Get hold of a utility called wintop. This comes from Microsoft (you can search for it at their site). Disable your screensaver and set Wintop to run on top of your screen. This will tell you what processes are running on your PC and %age of the CPU they are using. This may give you a clue to the problem

[tkray]

I was goning to suggest the same thing, sysmon if you have win98, also monitor ram to see if it's running low.

My old 486 had similar probs, I downloaded a freebie utility that frees up ram when it gets down to 2 mb.
try http://www.webattack.com, lots of free downloads that would suffice, can't hurt!

[socalgal]

http://www.webattack.com/

(comma in above URL)

[Zinzan]

This is all good stuff. I have a similar problem with my RAM. Is there anyway to check whether the RAM is working properly without taking apart the PC ?

I have 128MB RAM, but at best I have 34% free (at the moment it's 1%)with just systray and explorer running !!!!!

Carry on good people !!!!

Zinzan

[pickel]

Just my $.02... Some months ago, while watching Kate and Leo on the Screen Savers on ZDTV, the very same problem was brought up.
Kate said that by the procees of opening window after window the system inherrently just slows down. She suggested or more imphatically implied that a windows user should restart Windows( select shutdown..
restart, while holding down Shift key) Will only restart Windows. It works for me http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

the pickel

[tkray]

Oops.

[Richard_Cranium72]

Morgan, I looked for "Wintop" at MS, no luck, Pickel, the re-start for Windows on one of my puters(BB)went to the "Windows is shutting down", and locked there.. good try though, I'll give it a go on the others soon.. Just a question, why do some leave the machine running all the time? Running seti or something? The HD bearings take a beating like that. The old theory on not shutting down was that the mobo solder joints would crack from "Thermal-Cycling" the new mobo's are not suppossed to be prone to this. DrVette

[Petros]

Yeah, I'm running seti while I'm at work.

Wierd thing is about the slowdown, resource meter shows about the same report all the time now, but the computer still slows down after a while. I've got it to about 3 days before it needs a reboot now though. I'll keep workin at it!

[Zinzan]

Hi,

I have downloaded directx ver.7 which I have been running since it was released (problem occurred with directx 6, so it isn't that)

Do you know anything about VGA drivers. I was reading last night that with my motherboard having graphics card on board etc that I should have loaded the VGA driver BEFORE I loaded the drivers for the graphics card. Any how, I loaded the VGA driver, tested with AE2 but problem persisted. I then uninstalled the graphics driver (ATI RAGE PRO) and re-installed. The problem still persisted.

Question is: COULD this be something worth exploring further ?
I was thinking about formatting again and the re-installing everything in the right order. Is this worth doing, considering above. (I don't want to be doing this if possible 'cos it's a right pain in the ****)

NOTE: SORRY TO ANYONE AND EVERYONE ABOUT GOING ON ABOUT THIS FOR SO LONG AND FOR BEING "ALL OVER THE PLACE" WITH MY THINKING. HOPE YOU UNDERSTAND !!!

Zin !

[socalgal]

ZinZan, ?? please cut & paste your above post and start a new thread. This will help you get more replies and not throw Petros' thread off his/her problem. (btw, I searched the past 5 days and saw no thread relating to the above. If you have previously posted on that topic and have not received replies, you can also Post Reply to that thread to bring it to the top. Thanks. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Zinzan]

OOOooops, sorry !!!!

erm, please ignore all ... Mistake !

Zin

[Amarok]

Ok here is an off the wall suggestion.... are you letting windows handle your virtual memory?? Or do you have it specificly defined?

With my old P-133 with 32 MB ram had the same kind of problem... would keep on slowing down until it would do nothing... You may want to try setting the virtual memory to a specific size IE MIN 64MB MAX 64MB From what I understand by doing this the swap file is a constant size and will not fragment the location this way. (Don't know how true it is) This seemed to take care of my problem with the P 133

[Petros]

I have my swap file set to 150MB. That did help but it didn't seem to get rid of the problem. Thanks for the suggestion!

[CrasHdEfeCT]

your CPU must be overheating, try getting a better heat sink, or consult the techinical support of the manufacturer. Yes, it could be a memory leak, try checking your swap file, and change the minimum and maximum to the same number, to get the number, multiply the RAM u have by 2, and place that number at the max and min. Download CPU Idle also, so it can cool ur CPU.