I have a 50 GB hard-drive, and 11.1 GB is free. Yet, it takes 20 minutes to launch Firefox, and about one minute to load each new page. Games also run at 1/10 of the speed they used to.
What's going on, and how do I fix this?
Computer is as slow as molasses.
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11.1 GB is free
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Whats your processor speed on your awesome computer?
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Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.86GHz 782 MHz, 512 MB of RAM
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Have you cleaned up your computer, defraged, checked for updates for your comp, etc?
Originally Posted by Drake_Cloud
He didn't come back because he thought he could win, he came back because he's a goddamn hero and that's what heroes do.
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I just got an update last night. Steam apparently tried to defrag my computer for me because I was deleting stuff left and right to get it to run, but I ended up removing that and don't know how to commission another defrag.
As far as "cleaned up" I don't know what you mean. My computer was significantly more occupied a week ago (125 MB free space) so I've deleted a lot of useless junk, but the Firefox start up remains as slow as it was back then.
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I mean using the disk cleanup program. It compresses and cleans out old files
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What operating system did you install? How many application lauch when you boot (this is important cause they can take their time to lstart and if you have many then–--> slow start)? Also i guess that 512Mb aren't that much nowadays if you have multiple applications you need (especially when you run many of them at the same time)
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Two things I usually do with with my laptop if I notice big slow downs.
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I clean up my computer. Physically. There is usually like a ton of dust inside it. Most of it blocking cooling fan system. I have to do this couple times a year and it usually makes a big difference.
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I just reinstall my OS. A bit bothersome and extreme thing to do but makes the laptop like a new again so it's worth the extra trouble. I have done it twice now and I think I need to do it again pretty soon.
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You can also run msconfig (execute/run –--> type in 'msconfig' ) to look what services are in the autostart and get rid of some you think aren't worth to start making the boot faster. You can also go through all the programs you've installed over the years.
Many of them are not used at all and just waste diskspace.
Or the hardware can't keep up with the software you've installed. In that case an upgrade would be the solution. -
I always pictured you as the 'man in the know' Terek. Most of the stuff your referring to is basic computer knowledge.
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You might also want to run spybot search and destroy(anti spyware/malware) or somesuch in case your comp has zombiefied and is out merrily conducting ddos attacks and leaving you with no cpu time or memory.
I assume you've already done virus sweeps.
- I just reinstall my OS. A bit bothersome and extreme thing to do but makes the laptop like a new again so it's worth the extra trouble. I have done it twice now and I think I need to do it again pretty soon.
This will definitely fix things unless you have a hardware fault, but remember you'll need to back up all your data elsewhere, and reinstall all your programs - which is a problem if you no longer have installation discs as you'd have to download/buy the programs again.
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After you've got it back running at decent speed (is this a laptop or a desktop?) it wouldn't hurt to add more ram, because what you have is next to nothing =/ Though that won't solve your problem since you said everything was running faster before, it'll make things even faster in the future.
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Pentium M is a mobile chip.
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I mean using the disk cleanup program. It compresses and cleans out old files
How do I run that?
What operating system did you install? How many application lauch when you boot (this is important cause they can take their time to lstart and if you have many then–--> slow start)? Also i guess that 512Mb aren't that much nowadays if you have multiple applications you need (especially when you run many of them at the same time)
1. Windows XP.
2. Three. ZoneAlarm, AVG and Privoxy (which I should remove).I always pictured you as the 'man in the know' Terek. Most of the stuff your referring to is basic computer knowledge.
I'm not "smart with computers".
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Assuming you have windows, you hit the start button (or flag) in the lower left corner. Go to all programs/program list, click the folder labeled 'accessories', then the 'system tools' folder.
Inside you'll find a variety of programs. Disk clean up is one of themOnce opening it up, choose the drive you want to clean (most likely C://) It'll take it a few minutes to load up. When it does it will have a list of items, make sure you checkmark all of the boxes. Click okay. The cleanup will take a while, but it will shut off on its own.
After it's done, try restarting your computer. It should run a lot faster after this
Originally Posted by Drake_Cloud
He didn't come back because he thought he could win, he came back because he's a goddamn hero and that's what heroes do.
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I tried to clean the disk, but the only file it wanted to compress was Chaos;Head, which I need to finish because it's just taking up 4GB of free space. But that was it, there weren't any other files it targeted.
Running SpyBot atm in case of the problem Darkstorm mentioned.
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Question: Have you got iTunes?
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Try this first check you IDE Primary/Secondary Channel Transfer mode if the transfer mode is set to PIO only thats the problem change the PIO only to DMA.
How to?
go to my computer right click > properties > in hardware tab > click device manager or go to start > run > type this devmgmt.msc
the Device manager window will pop up/open
click the + in IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers > IDE Primary/Secondary Channel option will appear and just simply right click properties to check the transfers mode. -
I tried to clean the disk, but the only file it wanted to compress was Chaos;Head, which I need to finish because it's just taking up 4GB of free space. But that was it, there weren't any other files it targeted.
Running SpyBot atm in case of the problem Darkstorm mentioned.
That could be a big part of the slowing down too. My brother's had a bunch of games on his comptuer which slowed it down considerably.
Another thing you should do is use this site
Install all the updates. It should help :P
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com -
How can games slow down the computer if they're not running at the moment he starts his internet browser? Doesn't make sense to me.
On the other hand NTFS isn't Fat32… So it doesn't have the huge fragmentation issues of the old filesystem right? At least i haven't experienced it yet. Can some sysadmin please confirm this assumption?
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How can games slow down the computer if they're not running at the moment he starts his internet browser? Doesn't make sense to me.
On the other hand NTFS isn't Fat32… So it doesn't have the huge fragmentation issues of the old filesystem right? At least i haven't experienced it yet. Can some sysadmin please confirm this assumption?
They can slow the computer down as a whole simply due to the space they take up.
It's worst in Dells -
Then the whole system is already swapping like hell…
Otherwise the diskspace issue isn't a problem at all... Remember the operating system is in the main memory... It has to starts the firefox application which means load in from the harddrive and every module the program needs. So the only bottleneck is the access to the harddrive or the CPU load...
I've already stated that NTFS is really better than FAT32 when it comes to fragmentation issues due to numerous programs installed and desinstalled over the time...
So the games just being on the harddrive can only be bothersome if there is no space left on the drive (space that the system needs to swap when the main memory is full which might happen regarding that he has 512 MB). Annnnd he has 11GB free on his harddrive so... It's really not the problem here.
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Maggie's right. Only if you start to eat into what windows has allotted to the pagefile would you even start to have any problems.
Terek, if you're still having problems I'd be interested to see what's taking all the cpu time when you're having problems.
When you're experiencing problems, please do the following:
ctrl alt del
click on the processes tab
click on cpu tab to get usage in descending order(may have to do this twice)
Note down what's using the big chunks of cpu time
Then do the same for Mem usageAnd post the processes here, that way we can see if anything is taxing your cpu or ram.
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Have you tried cleaning the registry? A lot of useless entries are gathered up as you install/uninstall application and this may be one of the reasons your computer is running slow. I suggest cleaning with RegSupreme Pro. It's not free, but I trust you know how to acquire software. :ninja:
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